The Way Back: A movie review

Peter Weir’s newest film “The Way Back” is based on the book “The Long Walk” by Slavomir Rawicz and stars Jim Sturgess, Colin Farell and Ed Harris. It is a collage of ruthless elements: the unmerciful hand of Joseph Stalin and the unflinching Siberian Gulag, history’s most atrocious prison system. But most of all, it is a gut-wrenching image of the power of this planet’s magnificent landscapes.

This impressive, though impersonal, narrative follows the incredible journey of five escapees of a Siberian Gulag. The five men trek for weeks through the horrifying Siberian wasteland to reach the Mongolian border. Along the way, they acquire a tagalong; a Polish girl played unsophisticatedly, but still impressively by Saorise Ronan, who develops a close relationship with “Mr. Smith”, an American who was taken prisoner by the Soviets. The escapees decide to cross the Gobi Desert, then the Himalayas, and finally to escape to India.

While this harrowing 4000 mile journey may inspire strong emotional reactions, the characters themselves are disappointingly underdeveloped. One gets the feeling that the movie must have been severely gutted to fit into its 133 minutes, because many of its highly potential scenes are cut down and skimmed over. Characters that could have easily blossomed into fantastic vessels of the ruthlessness of the journey are forced to remain distant, and seemingly unfeeling, leaving the audience unsympathetic to the amount of suffering endured by the five men.

That being said, the acting was superb for the amount of character given. Ed Harris remains unsmiling throughout the movie, and embodies the escapees’ will to live, something that resonates with the audience for days after watching the movie. Jim Sturgess comes the closest to being emotional enough to reach out to the audience, by refusing to leave anyone behind in the gulag, declaring that “If they die, they die free men.”

While “The Way Back” fails to reach its full potential to reach out and shake the audience, the pure power of this awe-inspiring trek through magnificent, although ruthless, environments is enough to suggest watching this impressive testament to endurance and camaraderie.