There are many good ways to begin movies, and also many bad ways. Telling the audience the ending of the movie in the first 20 seconds would fall into the latter category.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Peter Weir’s would-be epic World War II escape film The Way Back does, and it never recovers from the blunder.
The film centers on political prisoners in a 1940 Soviet gulag in Siberia, where conditions, as you can imagine, are not pleasant. A Pole named Janusz (Jim Sturgess) decides he’ll either escape or die trying, enlisting the help of an American, Mr. Smith (Ed Harris) and five others in the plan. During a severe snowstorm, they all manage to escape and blend into the surrounding forest.
All that’s left to do is traverse the hundreds of miles of Siberian tundra during winter and slip into Mongolia, and voila!, they’re free. Or at least so they think.
Being an escape movie, I’ll keep the plot summary short to avoid ruining the movie. I can leave that to the first few moments of the film, when director Weir makes the amazing decision to tell the audience exactly what ensues. While the movie is based on a true story, it’s not exactly Titanic where we all knew what was going to happen, but keeping us in suspense past the opening credits might have been a nice touch.
In spite of this, the entire cast does commendable jobs (although Sturgess’ accent at times sounds like Ralph Macchio attempting to speak Russian). Unfortunately, their characters are so underdeveloped that not only does the audience feel no real connection, neither do the characters to one another for most of the film. Then when they do start hitting adversity, the sentiment is so forced that it verges on sappy.
Weir’s direction is of little help, exhausting the audience just as much as the characters in the film during the 132-minute running time. The Way Back was seven years in the making, and considering Weir’s two previous films were the brilliant Truman Show and the entertaining Master and Commander, this really should have been much better.
The major entity that the movie does have going for it is Russell Boyd’s masterful photography, helped out greatly by the contrasts between the two major locations of the film, the Gobi Desert and Siberian wilderness. The desert shots in particular are a delight to look at, reminding us of Lawrence trudging through Arabia in his white robes.
But no matter how visually pleasing, The Way Back is for the most part a bore to sit through. My suggestion is to just Google it and find out the real story for yourself. Or you could just sit through the first 20 seconds, either one.
— Cameron Dunbar is a sophomore studying journalism. Send him your own war stories at cd211209@ohiou.edu.
