By Ben Davis
I’m a sucker for a good sports movie. Having played sports my whole life and formed relationships and discipline through them, sports mean a lot to me and have shaped me into who I am today. I’m still waiting on a good high school wrestling movie (no, Vision Quest doesn’t count).
Speaking of sports movies, Gavin O’Connor has made some of the greatest sports films in recent memory. Miracle (2003) is an all-time great sports movie about the legendary miracle on ice that occurred at the 1980 Winter Olympics where the USA hockey team did the impossible and beat the Soviet Union in the final seconds of the game. The ending still gives me chills. “Do you believe in Miracles?” Yes, yes I do. Not only did he direct Miracle, but he also directed my favorite sports movie of all-time in Warrior (2011): a mixed martial arts film staring Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton as brothers competing in the same tournament for different but equal goals. The brilliant thing about Warrior is the fact that really it’s a family drama disguised as a sports film. It’s a story about brotherhood, family, and fixing broken things. I adore it with all my heart. Gavin O’Connor has proven himself to not only be a great sports film director, but also a great actors director. He proves time and time again that he can pull a great performance from his actors by understanding the actors and characters and knowing exactly how to pull those performances out.
That leads me to our leading man, Ben Affleck. It’s an understatement to say that Ben Affleck’s career has been a bit of a roller coaster. He started off in such classics as Dazed and Confused (1993), Good Will Hunting (1997) (winning him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay), Chasing Amy (1997), and Shakespeare in Love (1998). He would later favor more blockbuster affair like Armageddon (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001), The Sum of All Fears (2002), and Daredevil (2003). After a string of high profile misfires—in particular Gigli (2003)—Ben Affleck would eventually earn himself back in the good graces of Hollywood by doing such great films Gone Baby Gone (2007), The Town (2010), Argo (2012) (winning him an Oscar as a producer for Best Picture of the year), and Gone Girl (2014). As previously stated though, Affleck’s career has been like a roller coaster. He would again face public scrutiny when he decided to dawn the cape and cowl for 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Fortunately for him, he would prove most critics wrong by consistently being the one of the few positive things people took away from Batman v Superman (not to me though, I love that movie and always had faith he would be a great Batman/Bruce Wayne). In my opinion, he’s the greatest big screen version of Batman/Bruce Wayne we’ve ever gotten. The Way Back is an interesting project for Affleck to tackle. It’s a movie about a struggling alcoholic who turns to his former glory to try and find his way back. Ben Affleck is a recovering alcoholic himself who has had his ups and downs over the past couple of years and has been really open about them. Is The Way Back the film to get this legend back on track?
The Way Back is directed by Gavin O’Connor and stars Ben Affleck as Jack Cunningham, a former all-star basketball player struggling with addiction to alcohol who attempts to bring his disparate alma mater back to its former glory after several hard years of being aggressively mediocre.
The official synopsis of The Way Back is honestly a bit misleading. Much like Warrior, The Way Back is a film disguised as a sports drama but really it’s a character study of a man who’s lost, and lost hard. A man who’s pain is so unbearable that he tries to drink himself into a coma to dim the pain of past regrets and loss. It’s not till he turns back to his former glory that he starts to find a way to get himself back to recovery and forge a better future for himself. Honestly, The Way Back is a very cathartic film not only for the audience, but also probably for Ben Affleck himself. This movie excels in almost every way possible and goes above and beyond the stereotypical nature that these films can fall into.
One of the big positives about The Way Back is Ben Affleck. His performance as Jack Cunningham is transcendent. You feel his past trauma, pain, and regrets with each and every expression on his face. Ben Affleck could have easily given a very showy performance here, but instead he gives a very thoughtful and earnest performance by being subtle in his delivery and being very open and incredibly vulnerable. This is the performance of his very illustrious career and in my opinion an Oscar worthy performance. Hopefully, this will be remembered come next January.
Another big positive here is the exceptional direction of Gavin O’Connor. He perfectly captures this redemption story by again disguising it as a sports film blending real tragedy with hopeful, yet, realistic outcomes. He avoids clichés of the sports movie genre and dares to be different. That successfully separates this from traditional sports film affairs. Between The Way Back, The Accountant (2016), saving the troubled production of Jane Got a Gun (2015), Warrior, and Miracle, Gavin O’Connor is proving that he may be the most underrated director working in Hollywood today.
As I’ve stated earlier, sports mean a lot to me as I’ve competed in and coached sports including basketball, football, wrestling, jujitsu, and bodybuilding. Sports build hard work, determination, team building dynamics, and above all else character. The Way Back perfectly encompasses all those things by demonstrating the impact a coach can have on a team, and the impact a team can have on a coach. Movies in this genre attempt this often, but it is rarely executed as well as this.
I really only have one negative here and it’s that while I do love the team/coach dynamic, I wish there was more of it here. As I mentioned earlier, this movie is really a character study on the character of Jack Cunningham and his recovery and because of that the team takes a back seat. I wish I could have spent more time with the players and gotten to know them a bit more. At the end of the day though, if getting more of the team meant getting less of Ben Affleck in this movie, I wouldn’t have wanted it.
In conclusion, The Way Back is more than just your average underdog story. It doesn’t falter under the pressure of films like this that have come before and take the easy route. Really, The Way Back is a film about trauma, addiction, overcoming pain and regret, and daring to make the right steps in order to get your way back. This is a powerful redemption tale that everyone should keep on their radar and see when movie going reconvenes.