The Way Back: Film Review

The Way Back: Film Review

Cast: Ben Affleck, Janina Gavankar, Al Madrigal
Director: Gavin O'Connor

In many ways, The Way Back is a film you've seen before.

One of a broken sports person and alcoholic, not searching for redemption, who's offered the chance to get back in the game and tackle their own personal demons at the time.

But The Way Back suffers from the delicious irony that its central star has battled with these very demons and has slowly fought his way back.

Affleck is Jack Cunningham, a former high school basketball star, who's asked to coach the local team - for no real reason other than they're tanking and he was their next big thing. Initially reticent, the separated Cunningham takes on the mantle and begins his journey back.

Dour and rightfully downbeat, The Way Back sees Affleck reteaming with his The Accountant director to create the sort of sports underdog film that is all too rote and all too familiar. And yet, with a relative career best from Affleck, the film's certainly got some redeeming features.

Sequences wondering if Jack will hit the booze again may ooze familiarity, but tempered with scenes where Jack goes through a 30 pack of beer in one night, with a routine of picking one out of the freezer, returning a fresh one in there ready feeling raw and tempered with the kind of veracity Hollywood rarely siphons for films about alcoholics. There's no doubt Affleck brings a lot of himself to the role, and it wouldn't work without him.

And it's in the central relationships the film rises too - a needling sister who's only doing it out of love, and a coach and head coach relationship that's tinged with respect, admiration and awareness of failing.

Certainly, in the rest of the film, there are a few narrative jumps too many.

The team gets better somehow without any real conviction why, Jack decides to coach them without any real reason why he changes his mind so suddenly - these are the beats which feel off in The Way Back, and which ground the tale of a redemptive blue collar worker with moments that see you more questioning why and lifting you out of the moment.

In the final furlong, the film lapses into lamentable melodrama, and the maudlin elements threaten to topple Affleck's good work, rather than build on it; ending on mawkishness and a message of hope may be central to The Way Back's MO, but unfortunately, it leaves this final drink of drama stinging in your throat.