Peter Weir’s THE WAY BACK [5/10]

Colin Farrell brings welcome vitality, menace and humour to The Way Back, an otherwise dourly plodding and dutifully worthy affair – one that represents a disappointing, belated return to the big screen for revered Australian director Peter Weir some seven years after rousingly briny-brackish epic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

Whereas M&C‘s scriptwriters John Collee and Weir took the liberty of combining two separate Patrick O’Brian novels, with pleasingly organic results, the screenplay for The Way Back (by Weir and Keith R Clarke) always feels somewhat constrained by its literary source – a (controversial) “memoir” by Polish war-veteran Slavomir Rawicz. The story recounts how a ragtag group of Gulag prisoners – of several different nationalities – broke out of their camp in 1941 and trekked thousands of miles in search of a non-Communist safe haven, suffering various injuries and fatalities along the way.

In the small ensemble, Farrell’s Russian career-criminal Valka – grime-encrusted, elaborately tattooed and aggressively feral of manner – makes the most vivid impact, though it’s a little disappointing that this knife-wielding, barely-civilised thug so quickly becomes a semi-domesticated, doggy source of comic relief after swearing allegiance to the group’s youthful leader Janusz (Jim Sturgess.) And it’s regrettable that Valka should have to exit the action not long after halfway, given the performer’s above-the-call-of-duty contributions to the enterprise.

Both Ed Harris (as an enigmatic, craggily taciturn American known only as ‘Mr Smith’) and Saoirse Ronan (as charming, scheming Gypsy girl Irena, who joins the escapees during their Siberian wanderings) have their moments, the latter excelling in a calm scene of genuine third-act pathos which shows that Weir certainly hasn’t lost his “touch” entirely. Overall, however, the director never quite manages to bring the stodgy material to life – it doesn’t help that the characters speak English with varying accents, though presumably they are ‘actually’ supposed to be conversing in Polish or perhaps Russian.

What was reportedly a troubled, cash-strapped production bogs down into repetitive, episodic sequences of hardship, bickering and mild peril – there’s never much sense, for example, that the much-feared Soviet authorities are in any way hot on our heroes’ and heroine’s trail.) In addition, the two-hour running time feels unduly brisk for what should ideally have been an inspiring, expansive affair covering thousands of miles amidsts the wildest contrasts of terrain. The finale is particularly weak, a simplistic black-and-white newsreel montage that draws Janusz’s story to its full-circle conclusion – half a century after the picture’s main events – on a manipulatively sentimental note.

Neil Young
14th January, 2011

THE WAY BACK
[5/10] : USA 2010 : Peter WEIR : 133m
seen 31/Dec/10 at Cineworld, St Helens : (£7.50) : {12/28}
with thanks to J.Colvin