The Way Back

The movie is about 7 prisoners who escape from a Soviet prison camp in Siberia, trying to flee the country during World War 2, based on a true story. How faithfully it retells the story I don't know. Not all of them make it, which the film gives away at the start by telling you how many of them reached India. You could figure that would be the case, given the length of the journey, so I guess it doesn't ruin anything. Not making it to India doesn't necessarily mean dying, after all.

There's a mixture of personalities, unsurprisingly. The Soviets locked everyone up. One gruff older American (Ed Harris), a Pole named  Janusz (Jim Sturgess), who is the one who convinces everyone to give it a try. His wife was forced to denounce him as a spy. Colin Farrell is in there as a Russian criminal, Valka, who goes with them because he's lost too many card games. Most of the mistrust is directed towards him, and considering he speaks privately with Janusz about which one of the others they should hope dies first, so they can eat that person, it's a valid concern.

The first half to two-thirds of the movie is good at showing the different problems they face to pull this off. The cold, obviously, food, the sheer distance to cover. There are several scenes in the movie where the camera pans from the characters to show the immense distance ahead of them, which also looks like extremely hostile terrain. The fact they have to think real hard about whether they could trust anyone, since there'll be a bounty on them. That plays in a lot, because it removes almost any ability to ask for help, and it creates a paranoia in the viewer when they take the chance. In the next scene, will they turn and see the soldiers and their dogs after them?

In the last third, after the survivors make it out of the desert, the film accelerates. They're quickly through China, into Tibet, on to India, then a flash forward through decades to resolve Janusz' story. Maybe those last however many miles really were uneventful. But it feels as though they just ran out of time. Or they decided they had spent enough time showing the characters suffering and dying, so no more of that.

I'm not sure what to cut. The desert sequence seems like their most dire straits, probably need to keep that. The first part of the film in the prison camp establishes a few of the connections and characters. There are some quiet conversations during the trek that build on that to help flesh out the others a little more. There's one in particular between the joker of the group and an artist who wishes to be a chef about preparing chicken I enjoyed. I don't know if they're strictly necessary, but they make me want to root for them a little more.