Review: The Way Back

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk 6,500 kilometres from the winter wastes of Siberia, across the Gobi Desert, over the Himalayas and into India? Don’t worry – you’ll have a good idea after slogging through The Way Back.

Inspired by an allegedly true escape from the Soviet Gulag, Peter Weir’s new adventure film doesn’t skimp on the physical details of the trek.

Peter Weir’s new adventure film, inspired by an allegedly true escape from the Soviet Gulag, doesn’t stint on the physical details of its epic, arduous trek. His characters endure and/or succumb to freezing, starvation, sand storms, sunstroke and maddening swarms of mosquitoes, just to name a few obstacles. What the movie does hold back on is characterization and dialogue, to the point where it seems to move at the speed of continental drift.

Jim Sturgess stars as Janusz, a Polish man falsely accused of being a spy and sentenced to 20 years in one of Stalin’s Siberian labour camps in 1940. Determined to escape from the moment he arrives, Janusz eventually recruits six fellow conspirators, including a stoic American engineer (Ed Harris) and a genial but brutal Russian thief (Colin Farrell).

The early scenes in the camp are muddy looking and muddled, as if Weir couldn’t wait to get them over with and break out into the wilderness. Once in the open air, he and his long-time cinematographer, Russell Boyd, revel in a succession of beautiful, forbidding landscapes, from lakes and mountains to deserts and steppes. (The film was co-produced by National Geographic, but before you mistake it for a travelogue, note that most of it was actually shot in Bulgaria and Morocco.)

While Weir’s camera lovingly roams the harsh terrain, he shows scant interest in the escapees themselves. We don’t learn much about them until they are joined by a fellow fugitive named Irena (Saoirse Ronan), a mysterious Polish teenager who claims to have escaped from a collective farm. Her inquisitive nature leads the men to talk about themselves – a little. Then it’s back to the scenery.

If nothing else, the movie’s trudging pace gives you plenty of time to think about it and jot down notes.

Most dishonest moment: The suggestion in the opening credits that the film is based on a true story. Actually, it’s based on The Long Walk by Slawomir Rawicz, a former Gulag prisoner, whose great escape yarn, first published in 1956, has since been debunked.

Most entertaining character: Farrell’s wily thief, Valka. Flashing steel teeth and a tattoo of Lenin and Stalin on his chest – not to mention a knife he affectionately calls "Wolf" – he bears about as much resemblance to a real Russian criminal as Jack Sparrow does to a real pirate. But at least he’s having fun.

Most enigmatic character: Sturgess’s Janusz. We know he wasn’t a spy, but we never learn who he is. His only apparent skill is an ability to plot a course by reading shadows on the ground. I’ll hazard a guess and say he was formerly a sundial repairman.

Sketchiest accent: Ronan’s Polish one, apparently acquired at one of Dublin’s better finishing schools.

Worst dialogue: Harris’s American, who mutters terse tough-guy observations that sound like they were written by Clint Eastwood.

Most bizarre religious imagery: In the Gobi Desert sequence, the pale, skinny Ronan, wearing a makeshift sun hat that looks like a crown of thorns and carrying her belongings on a stick, repeatedly stumbles and falls.

Moment of greatest relief: When four of the escapees finally come staggering out of the desert after a journey of Lawrence of Arabia proportions.

Moment of greatest distress: When you realize they’ve still got to cross the Himalayas. NOOOOO!!!!!

Most disconcerting moment: When the film ended and the clock indicated two hours had passed. Impossible — that was three hours, easy.

Biggest missed opportunity: In Rawicz’s book, he talks about sighting a pair of Yetis in the Himalayas. This picture could’ve used an encounter with an Abominable Snowman to liven things up. 

Better escape movies: Duh. The Great Escape. Not to mention Papillon, also based on a dubious "memoir" by an ex-convict, whose daring escapes from Devil’s Island were later called into question.

Better Gulag movies: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the 1970 film of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s classic novel, starring Tom Courtenay.

Better Peter Weir movies: Witness and The Truman Show, of course, but my personal favourite is one of his early Australian films, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). A delicate, eerie mystery set in the Macedon Ranges, its use of landscape as character prefigures (and overshadows) The Way Back. Rent it instead.

The Way Back opens in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver on Jan. 21.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBC News.