The Way Back movie 2020 is an American sports drama film. It tells a story of a troubled man with a formerly promising career in basketball who struggles with alcoholism while coaching the basketball team at his old high school.
The Way Back Movie Cast
| Ben Affleck as Jack Cunningham | Al Madrigal |
| Michaela Watkins | Janina Gavankar |
| Glynn Turman |
The Way Back Movie Review
The way back was directed by Gavin O’Connor the man behind other inspirational sports films like miracle or warrior. This film stars Ben Affleck and their second collaboration together after the accountant.
And he plays a former high school basketball player who was very lauded in his town for his talent. But over the years he gave up the game and fell into alcoholism.
But when he’s given the opportunity to coach the now terrible team that he used to play on, he might just have a shot at redemption.
Inspirational sports dramas have a formula to them at this point we kind of know what to expect. There’s been so many over the years and they rarely budge out of that formula.
There is a guy who has a checkered past of some kind he’s going to coach a team that doesn’t work well together. They don’t play well together. They don’t get along.
And maybe along the way they’ll learn something about each other to win some games will get excited we’ll stand up and cheer and will clap and it’ll be really awesome and we’ll all leave the theater feeling really happy.
But it’s a tried and true formula, that almost always works. It’s really easy to get excited about the underdog story and watch somebody who’s nothing rise to prominence.
Because they dealt with some problem they had, or they found the power within themselves to succeed. There’s a reason. There are so many rocky movies. There’s a reason why most of them are pretty good because they’re just fine.
It’s always exciting to see a movie like this and one of the best parts of this movie without a doubt is Ben Affleck. This is easily one of his best and it might actually be his best performance.
He’s obviously pulling from a lot of real-life issues. In interviews for this movie he’s talked a lot about how he has struggled with alcoholism for a long time. And even though he is giving a very personal performance here, it doesn’t feel showing.
It doesn’t feel like look at me I’m an actor and I’m so good at this. He’s really restrained actually and he’s without a doubt the reason to see this movie.
It’s unfortunate that the storytelling is not as strong as his work. As I said there’s a formula to these movies and we kind of know where they’re going to a point with this film which I’ll get into in a second.
But you can’t really escape the fact that you basically know where everything’s going for the first 2 acts of this movie. You’re going to see a team that’s not very good. You’re going to see a coach dealing with a lot of issues.
He has an unorthodox and weird way of coaching and people at this school find that odd. You know these are all things we’ve seen before. You expect them to start winning games and to get excited. The probably be like a really fun montage and yes all that’s in there.
But there’s a point in the movie where they make some risky choices. Some very real world choices that I respected a lot. The movie didn’t use Hollywood movie logic to gloss over what could really happen to somebody who is an alcoholic in this very public situation around young people all the time.
There’s a way that Hollywood could have made this movie, but they chose not to. They took a far more realistic route and I respect that. Because of that choice the third act was very unpredictable and I did not know where it was going. Which was weird .
Usually, when you see these inspirational sports movies, you’re waiting for the big final match for the big final gamer that slow mo moment where everything comes together. And this movie kind of goes in a different direction. And I appreciated that.
I will say that I would have liked to have seen more of a team dynamic amongst the players you don’t really get to know too many of them that well. They all have things they do that are funny one kid likes to dance, even though they lose.
You know another kid is really flirty. You basically get to know the team captain the most and even his character wasn’t built that well and that was disappointing to me.
This is a very Ben Affleck centered movie and he rises to the occasion. But I do think it could have been better if I knew more about these characters that are on the team.
Still, the way back is a pretty strong sports movie. But it’s more of a character study. I would relate it most I guess to Hoosiers which is much better even still and if you’ve never seen Hoosiers you really should it’s a damn good basketball movie.
But this is still a pretty strong movie with a great performance from Ben Affleck. I’m gonna give The Way Back Movie 2020 a B. Guys, thank you so much as always for reading my reviews. Look forward to more reviews very soon. See you next time.
