The Way Back

Finding The Way Back is an incredible drama that's emotional and powerful, managing to use an extremely familiar narrative effectively. Ben Affleck gives a phenomenal and personal lead performance that's easily one of his best. Al Madrigal and Janina Gavankar are both great and all of the young cast are all really good. Gavin O'Connor's direction is excellent, it's extremely well filmed and well paced. The music by Rob Simonson is fantastic.

Looks like a sports movie and it is, but only for 50%, because there is much more to this story:.Ben Affleck is an alcohol addicted basketball coach, who volunteers to coach a team of lousy amateurs at his old highschool. That's the sports part of the movie.

But there is a lot of (bleak) slowburning drama as well. Look at the poster. Ben Affleck looks depressed and he is. In this story Ben Affleck has lost his wife, his son has died and he has lost every dream or hope he has ever had. He only drinks himself into oblivion to numb his pain. Will he in some way be able to start coping with the death of his young son, which caused him to start drinking in the first place? That's the heart of this touching movie.

The good: Terrific acting performance of an alcohol addict by Ben Affleck. Subtle direction of this drama by director Gavin O Conner. Really touching and UPLIFTING story.

Any bad? Well, it's certainly not a straight forward success sports movie. It's quite bleak and depressing at moments, because the real focus of this movie is about Ben Affleck's alcohol addiction and some might not like to watch such a slowburning movie about such a bleak subject... I did though. I was really impressed...

Jack Cunningham (Ben Affleck) is an alcoholic construction worker separated from his wife Angela (Janina Gavankar) after a devastating tragedy. He is convinced to coach his alma mater Catholic high school Bishop Hayes basketball team. It's the site of his greatest glory where he threw away his potential and started a descent into addiction.

As a sports underdog story, this is very standard and straight forward. The most non-standard aspect of that happens at the end when it stops short. It's also very stripped down. The kids would normally get more screen time. Only one kid gets a functional character progression. Mostly, this is compelling for Ben Affleck playing a struggling alcoholic and director Gavin O'Connor trying to strip him down to the studs. My only complaint about his part is that he needs to show his self-destructiveness more overtly in the beginning. He should start in a bad place and then recover over the movie until he starts backsliding. It doesn't need to be a mystery.

This is a story about a man, approaching middle age, and out of the blue being asked to step in as head coach of a mediocre high school basketball team. That the man is an alcoholic battling his demons is the real story.

Ben Affleck is in the lead role as Jack, working in construction, separated from his wife and still grieving from the death of his young son just a few years earlier. His routine is to stop at the local bar after work and often being helped home, walking distance away, by a regular patron.

Jack had been a statewide basketball star in high school but gave up the chance to play in college at Kansas and a potential pro career. Because of issues related to his dad. And now his old school is asking him for help with the team.

This is a really good movie but hard to watch at times. Affleck himself has been on a similar path so his performance is very authentic. In a 5-minute extra on the disc he explains how his own battle with alcoholism entered into the characterization. My wife and I watched it at home on DVD from our public library.

The Way Back is a movie that is quite enjoyable especially if you are a fan of sports movies and love basketball. Ben Affleck gives a strong performance which feels very personal to him. This element heightens the film even more, it has a lot of things that you would find in the sports genre such as: Motivational scenes which make you feel good and make you want to support the characters. It doesn't oversimplify the game of basketball as well, the way they use strategies and plays feel like something you would actually see in a huddle of a high school basketball game and as a former assistant coach for a school basketball team I found that to be a really cool element. The way it handles the drama aspects outside of basketball and the real reason as to why the character is an alcoholic I found to be quite compelling and it felt quite emotional at times.

The film has a couple of drawbacks with the main one being that this is a little too cliched at times, a lot of tropes that you would see in sports films happen in this one, and I noticed that a lot of elements on the coaches interactions with the players were a little too similar to coach carter, which was a film that handled those elements better. Also the acting apart from Affleck for the most part was sub par, especially in the first act. The run time felt a little too long as well due to the fact that there were a lot of sub plots, I think it could have been better if they would cut some of them out to create a more tighter storyline.

Overall, I had a good time with the way back, i think if you're not a fan of the genre you wont find anything new here. However if you love sports, basketball and typical films in this genre you will have a good time like I did, and the awesome Ben Affleck performance is a bonus.