Well-made artefact fails to score
Review
The Way Back (M, 108 mins) Directed by Gavin O’Connor Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★ 1⁄2
One day, if they haven’t already, someone with more time on their hands than me will write a decent essay on the role of the American pickup truck in modern American dramas, specifically those square-cut and blunt-nosed Dodges and Fords of the late-1970s and early-80s.
When a production designer and a director are working to put together the visual short-hand of ‘‘flawed-but essentially-decent-American-guy’’, you can get good odds on a couple of essential elements.
There will a fondness for untucked plaid worn over a T-shirt, and a little Springsteen or Petty will find its way on to the soundtrack.
And our hero will inevitably get to and from his workplace and home via his local sport’s bar, while driving one of these iconic little trucks.
It’s a lesson the makers of The Way Back know very well. From the moment Ben Affleck’s troubled construction worker, Jack, first appears on screen – leaving a bar, heaving his newly portly self into the threadbare seats of his truck – we know exactly who this guy is supposed to be.
We know that Jack is here to seek redemption, quite probably via the crucible of team sports.
Despite necking a case of beer every night and turning up for his shift with a hip-flask of vodka in his reusable coffee cup, Jack is still holding down a job in construction.
When his old high school reaches out to Jack – who we learn was once a championship level basketball player – to take over as coach of his old team, we understand that the trajectory of The Way Back has been laid out before us with little deviation expected or asked for.
And, sure enough, The Way Back does, in a muted fashion, hit the beats of the genre. The trouble is, despite a couple of decent performances at its heart, and a nice shift behind the camera from Eduard Grau (Buried) The Way Back just never achieves lift off.
By focusing more on Jack’s journey to sobriety, rather than allowing the fortunes of the team to stand-in for Jack’s travails, director Gavin O’Connor and his team rob themselves of the film’s greatest potential asset.
Hampered by a needlessly talky and obvious script, and the far-too naked attempt to be a ‘‘good’’ film, at the expense of also being an entertaining and engaging one, The Way Back is a worthy and well made artefact. But when it turns up again, at 8.30pm on free-to-air TV, in a year or so, you’ll be struggling to remember whether you have even seen it before.