The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
A different way
‘Way Back’ a so-so character study of an alcoholic disguised as a sports flick
You could be forgiven if you thought “The Way Back” was, at its core, a sports movie.
Sports certainly plays a key role in it — star Ben Affleck’s character, Jack Cunningham, does coach a high school basketball team.
Plus, its director, Gavin O’Connor, was at the helm for one of the most rousing and satisfying sports movies of this century: 2004’s “Miracle,” about the gold medal-winning 1980 United States men’s ice hockey team. That was a Disney movie. This isn’t.
While Warner Bros Pictures’ “The Way Back” teases the tried-and-true sports-movie cliches — Jack is a down-and-out fellow trying to bring together a scrappy squad of underdogs to play as a team and best others with far more talent — it is far more interested in exploring the effect Jack’s addiction is having on his life. No, “The Way Back” is less a sports movie and more a character study of an alcoholic.
And as such, it is only so compelling.
We meet Jack working at a construction site. He is drinking from a travel coffee mug we soon will assume contained booze. (As soon as he gets in his car, he pulls a beer from a cooler in the back seat and pours it into a cup for the drive.)
For Thanksgiving at the large home of his sister, Beth (Machaela Watkins of Hulu’s “Casual”), he brings a box of alcohol, drinking liberally from a bottle of the hard stuff from his car in her driveway before going inside the house.
That night, Beth tells him she worries about him — as does the wife from whom he’s separated, Angela (Janina Gavankar, “True Blood”), who’s recently reached out to Beth — which leads to an angry reaction.
Soon, Jack is asked to meet with the head of the Catholic high school he attended, Bishop Hayes — where, as a player in the mid-1990s, he led the Tigers to a couple of state championships. He is asked to take over for the current coach, who must lead the job due to health concerns. The lone assistant, Dan (Al Madrigal), can’t take the job, as the time commitment required of the headman would interfere with family responsibilities.
Jack, who’s never coached a day in his life, asks if the team is good; he is told quite simply it is not. The school hasn’t had a successful program since he played.
Jack is asked for an answer the next morning — there’s a game in a few days — and he spends the evening practicing the phone call in which he will politely decline the job. He does this while plowing through an entire refrigerator shelf of beer cans, moving a couple into the freezer briefly before pounding them. You get the sense this is not exactly abnormal behavior for him.
Of course, take the job he does, and he soon he finds himself addressing a team of frustratingly short players.
Strangely, the script by Brad Ingelsby isn’t interested in letting us get to know the players very well, with the slight exemption of the quiet Brandon (Brandon Wilson, making his feature debut), whom Jack must bring out of his shell.
“The Way Back” is almost all about Jack, who is scolded by the team chaplain for the parade of fourletter words he unleashed at his players during games — again, not a Disney movie — but who does make the team better and begins to turn his life around.
Over the course of the film, you learn more about why Jack and Angela are no longer together and why he spends almost every night at the bar. It’s tough stuff.
That component of his life also leads to the inevitable slip late into the film, where — and this is a credit to Ingelsby’s script — there are consequences for his actions.
Ultimately, though, the writing isn’t strong enough from Ingelsby (“Out of the Furnace,” “Run All Night”), whose father, Tom, played at Villanova and briefly in the NBA before becoming a coach at a Catholic high school. (Brad says in the film’s production notes that he based a lot of how Jack talks to his players on his dad’s language around his teams.) Given the direction the story takes, asking for a highly satisfying ending may have been too greedy, but the climax leaves you feeling a little short-changed.
You’d have expected more emotional punch from O’Connor, who’s directorial credits also include 2011’s solid mixed-martial-arts film “Warrior” and oddbut-interesting 2016 effort “The Accountant,” which also starred Affleck.
Given their history, it’s not surprising O’Connor helps draw out a performance from Affleck (“Argo,” “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”) that is the film’s strongest asset. Jack is a very believable drunk, exhibiting the mood swings some alcoholics display. (It doesn’t hurt that Affleck appears to be carrying a few extra pounds and that the makeup artists give him this puffy, glazed-over look in the first half of the film.)
“The Way Back” has its strengths and may hit home with those affected by addiction one way or another.
Still, you can’t help walking away wishing it were a Disney movie, one chock full of all those tried-and-true sports-movie cliches.