The Way Back movie review by Movie Review Mom

MOVIE TITLE: The Way Back

RATING: R

LENGTH: 1 hour, 48 minutes

Movie Review Mom GRADE: B-

IN A NUTSHELL:

Warner Brothers presents a compelling story of overcoming one’s worst self on the road to redemption. It’s painful to watch since ¾ of the movie display a man’s self-destructive behaviors over and over and over again. That man is portrayed in an outstanding, melancholy performance by Ben Affleck who reflects his own personal struggle with alcoholism in real life. It’s one of Affleck’s best and most honest performances to date. He’s extremely believable as a blue-collar worker and Everyday Man. What’s especially poignant is that he has recently admitted that his last trip to rehab was just a couple of years ago and that every day is still a battle. The movie is not the typical underdog story, but offers a more mature, realistic look at life. If you hate watching people implode by their terrible choices, this movie is going to be frustrating for you to watch. I wouldn’t call it entertaining. I would call it insightful and poignant.

By the way, this film is not related to the previous 2011 movie also called The Way Back

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

Lots of profanity. In fact, profanity is a running joke in the movie. Ben Affleck’s character has a serious potty-mouth, which is a big problem for a guy coaching basketball at a religious school. He promises he’ll work on it, but the F-bombs and other crude language continue to fly from the beginning to end of the movie.
Lots of bad behavior, such as dishonesty and self-indulgence.
LOTS of destructive behavior such as alcohol drinking, drunk driving, infidelity, and pill-popping.
You see sick kids in a hospital with discussions of death.
A man goes to rehab.

THEMES:

Redemption
“Just do all the little things right.” – Jack Cunningham (Ben Affleck)
Respect
Family
Hope
Grief
Addiction
Choices, consequences, and accountability
In the team practice after each basketball game, Coach Jack would ask the players, “What did we learn about ourselves last night?” What a great question and exercise.
“We can’t change the past, Jack. What we can do is choose how we move forward.” – Therapist

THINGS I LIKED:

The entire cast is solid and believable.
Lots of humor to balance out the many dramatic scenes.
There is something about the way the story is told that evokes verbal engagement from the audience. That’s a nice way of saying that there were a ton of people in the audience where I watched the press screening who kept talking to Ben Affleck during the movie. My husband was annoyed, but my friend and I were extremely entertained listening to comments like, “No! Don’t do it!”, “Try harder!”, “Stop!” ha ha
Act 1 is slow and painful to watch as we go to the bar with Ben Affleck’s character night after night. Act 2 offers more of the exhausting same. Then, in Act 3, we finally get to see the cliched sports movie give us the triumphant scenes we want to see. But wait, there is an Act 4 that catches us off guard. That’s where the heft of the movie takes an unexpected turn and provides meaty insights.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

This an overdone story that has been done better in other movies many times before.
There is a lot of basketball talk, as you can imagine, so if you’re not into basketball, you might get a little tired of all that. It’s a sports movie, so you can still understand the ups and downs of team drama. Be aware that the sports aspect of the movie is really only secondary to the main plot.
I’m assuming Cutter’s beer paid dearly for the product endorsement, since you see a LOT of scenes with Ben Affleck guzzling it.
There’s an exposition scene where one of the characters has to explain how high the stakes are so we care.
I started to get the feels, but I never actually broke down and cried. I felt like the emotional pull could have squeezed even harder.
A few times the camera moved around so fast that I actually got dizzy and had to look away from the screen.
While it’s somewhat cliched and predictable for a feel-good sports movie, it’s missing the obligatory training sequence in a musical montage. ha ha
The movie really focuses on Ben Affleck’s character, so we don’t get to learn a lot about the players on the basketball. A few of them have identifiable characteristics but the movie just doesn’t dive deep into them.
The friend of mine who watched the movie with me said he would have walked out during the first Act because he just can’t stand watching people drink themselves to death on screen. He was glad he stayed until the end but he said the powerful message at the end wasn’t worth having to sit through all of the tragic self-destruction in the majority of the film.

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