February 7, 2011: The Way Back
With an Oscar nomination for its makeup, I was compelled to see The Way Back this month, but I wanted to see it anyway. An interpretation of the true-life story of a group of prisoners of war during the second world war who escaped from a prison camp in Siberia and literally walked thousands of miles to freedom, The Way Back falls a bit into the standard storytelling traps of this kind of movie, but it’s such an awe-inspiring story that it’s hard not to be impressed.
There aren’t a lot of big acting names here other than Ed Harris, who gives an understated performance as the inspirational and pragmatic patriarch of the group. I don’t know how closely the film sticks to the real story, and I can’t imagine that in reality there were such standard types as the “guy you know is going to die first”, the “guy who remains heartless until a key moment in the journey and then changes”, and the “guy who is too compassionate for his own good but ends up saving the cynic’s life because of it”. I tend to like this kind of underdog story, and the scope of the journey offers opportunities for hiking set-pieces covering all kinds of terrain and all kinds of weather, from the bleak winter in the forest to the nearly impassable mountains to the endless dry and hot desert.
I can’t quite decide whether this is just a formulaic throwaway movie, or one which is more deep and meaningful. I don’t think I’ll bother trying to figure it out since I won’t likely see the movie again any time soon, but if this type of film sounds intriguing, go for it.
A good example of its type.
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