The Way Back: Good, but Just Misses the Mark

“The Way Back” featuring Ben Affleck came out last Thursday on March 6 and has done pretty well so far, earning $8.5 dollars and receiving solid reviews from critics. As soon as I finished the first trailer for it, I knew I had to see this movie. I mean Ben Affleck playing an alcoholic high school basketball coach with a dark past? it doesn’t get much better than that. Here is my review of the newly released film “The Way Back.”

Before I go on there will be spoilers so if you haven’t seen the movie you might wanna leave now. You’ve been warned.

“The Way Back” is a story about a former high school basketball star and Kansas Jayhawk commit, Jack Cunningham, who begins coaching the team he once starred on and lead to multiple state championships after their head coach suffered a heart attack. The team struggles at first, but eventually, they go on a run and make the playoffs for the first time in around two decades with the help of Cunningham and his aggressive coaching style. Along the way, Jack Cunningham hits rock bottom due to his alcoholism but through therapy, he overcomes his drug use and other personal issues to get his life together and fix his tainted relationship with his ex-wife.

This film is more of a character study of Jack Cunningham rather than a basketball movie. Obviously, a huge chunk of the movie is about the basketball team and their miracle season, but the main purpose of the movie centers around Cunningham’s journey as he struggles with alcoholism and eventually makes the decision to turn his life around after hitting rock bottom. I love that the movie went this route and focuses more on Jack Cunningham’s story because honestly, Ben Affleck carries this movie and it would’ve been a lot worse if the story wasn’t focused primarily on his character.

Another interesting thing this movie does is it makes the third act of this film very unpredictable. Cunningham gets fired after showing up to practice with a hungover before the teams’ first playoff game. He ends up never rejoining the team. This movie easily could’ve catered to the audience’s expectations and brought Jack back to the team after his firing or even not having him get fired at all and having the team win state as huge underdogs, but it doesn’t. I like that.

There’s another scene where Jack Cunningham goes to the bar like he regularly does on weekdays, but he ends up leaving before he has a chance to go inside. You can finally see the growth in this character as he’s making an effort to change his lifestyle. Everything goes downhill once his friend’s son gets sick with a tumor and he goes back to the same bar and gets drunk like never before. He hooks up with a random woman and takes her home, but there’s a big problem. He is drunk and gets behind the wheel under the influence. Of course, things go very badly and he crashes into someone’s trailer and breaks into what he thought was the woman’s house, but ended up being a stranger’s home. He gets in a scuffle with the homeowner and ends up getting injured and is taken to the hospital. This is when he finally realizes he’s ruining his life and goes to therapy to overcome his alcoholism. I like how unpredictable the third act of this movie is as Cunningham goes from drinking less and making a concerted effort to change his lifestyle, to getting deeper into his alcoholism and nearly losing everything. This movie takes you on a rollercoaster and doesn’t risk quality to meet the viewer’s expectations.

Here’s what I don’t like about the movie. There are a few things in this film that are really important to the storyline but aren’t explained or looked into as much as they should’ve been. What about Jack’s friend’s son who is dealing with the same type of tumor that his own son dealt with? There’s a scene where Jack’s friend and his wife find out some pretty devastating about their son, but you never hear about it ever again. Did he make it? Is he okay? What happened to this kid? I need to know this stuff!

Another part of the story I wanted to know more about was the relationship between Brandon Durrett, the star of the basketball team, and his father. Brandon’s father doesn’t approve of his son chasing his basketball dream because he had his own aspirations of playing basketball and his dreams were crushed and he doesn’t want that for his son. I wanted to see these two characters interact more than they do, and we do see his father become more accepting of his son and his dreams at the end of the movie when he goes to the first game he’d ever seen his son play, but I wanted a little bit more.

“The Way Back” is a really enjoyable film and I would 100% recommend it to anyone even if you aren’t a fan of basketball. Ben Affleck gives us one of if not the best performance of his career and makes this film watchable. The scenes between him and his ex-wife are amazing and emotional and probably the best part of the movie. The scene where Jack Cunningham apologizes to his wife for ruining their marriage might be the best scene of the entire movie. Affleck carries this film and without him, it wouldn’t work.

I love how unpredictable this movie is, especially in the third act, but it felt rushed and I wish the movie dug a little bit deeper on some of the side characters so the viewers would actually be invested in them. It could’ve been a fantastic movie, but unfortunately, it just misses the mark.

Grade: 6.5