Film Review - The Way Back (2020)

The Way Back reunites the Accountant director Gavin O’Connor with his star from that film and in this movie Ben plays Nick Cunningham an alcoholic who is separated from his wife and is asked by his old high school to take over as head coach of their Basketball team which is struggling big time but battles on the court are easier to fight than the battles inside a mans soul.

I’m a big Ben Affleck fan both as an actor but more so as a director (Argo, The Town and Live by Night are very handsomely mounted) and I really loved his and Mr O’Connor’s the Accountant from 2016 so I was keen to see them back together again and also this was the last movie I wanted to watch before the cinemas were ordered to close due to the current circumstances but now I’ve gotten to watch it.

And I have to say I liked this movie quite a bit and front and centre in this movie is Mr Affleck’s central performance and he really makes the most of every scene he’s in, watching him here feels like he is venting on film all of the public falls, struggles and frustrations that have happened to him in the past few years regarding his drinking, the breaking of his marriage and the fallout of his time as Batman in the DC Film Universe, there is very little vanity in this work nor is there the sense of watching a big time actor suffering for their art and their Oscar, this feels like a real and honest performance and it is never boring to watch.

I will also say however that the film works better as a character drama than as a Sports film, don’t get me wrong the sports moments and the basketball games are all perfectly fine but they don’t really feel like they blend naturally into the story they feel like something that’s there to give the lead something to latch onto in his life and the way those scenes are put together a clever enough screenwriter could have undone them for something or anything else and the film would have worked as well I feel.

And so that was the Way Back and its quite good with a great central performance at the centre of it and after watching this movie I wanted to see Ben and Gavin team up once again for their long rumoured Accountant sequel as I would love to see that maybe in the vein of Die Hard with a Vengeance perhaps, hey a man can dream, 3 out of 5.