7.3/10
108,054
204 user 216 critic

The Way Back (2010)

Trailer
2:02 | Trailer
Siberian gulag escapees travel four thousand miles by foot to freedom in India.

Director:

Peter Weir

Writers:

Slavomir Rawicz (novel), Peter Weir (screenplay) | 1 more credit »
Reviews
Popularity
2,795 ( 239)
Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 4 wins & 4 nominations. See more awards »

Videos

Photos

Edit

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Dragos Bucur ... Zoran
Colin Farrell ... Valka
Ed Harris ... Mr. Smith
Alexandru Potocean ... Tomasz
Saoirse Ronan ... Irena
Mark Strong ... Khabarov
Gustaf Skarsgård ... Voss
Jim Sturgess ... Janusz
Sebastian Urzendowsky ... Kazik
Zachary Baharov ... Interrogator (as Zahari Baharov)
Sally Brunski Sally Brunski ... Janusz's Wife, 1939 (as Sally Edwards)
Igor Gnezdilov Igor Gnezdilov ... Bohdan
Dejan Angelov Dejan Angelov ... Andrei
Stanislav Pishtalov Stanislav Pishtalov ... Commandant
Mariy Rosen ... Lazar (as Marii Grigorov)
Learn more

More Like This 

Certificate: 14A Action | Adventure | Drama
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.4/10 X  

During the Napoleonic Wars, a brash British captain pushes his ship and crew to their limits in pursuit of a formidable French war vessel around South America.

Director: Peter Weir
Stars: Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, Billy Boyd
Rescue Dawn (2006)
Certificate: 14A Action | Biography | Drama
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.3/10 X  

A U.S. fighter pilot's epic struggle of survival after being shot down on a mission over Laos during the Vietnam War.

Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies
Defiance I (2008)
Certificate: 13+ Action | Drama | History
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.2/10 X  

Jewish brothers in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe escape into the Belarussian forests, where they join Russian resistance fighters, and endeavor to build a village, in order to protect themselves and about one thousand Jewish non-combatants.

Director: Edward Zwick
Stars: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell
The Way Back (2020)
Certificate: 14A Drama | Sport
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.7/10 X  

Jack Cunningham was an HS basketball phenom who walked away from the game, forfeiting his future. Years later, when he reluctantly accepts a coaching job at his alma mater, he may get one last shot at redemption.

Director: Gavin O'Connor
Stars: Ben Affleck, Al Madrigal, Janina Gavankar
127 Hours (2010)
Certificate: 14A Biography | Drama
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.5/10 X  

A mountain climber becomes trapped under a boulder while canyoneering alone near Moab, Utah and resorts to desperate measures in order to survive.

Director: Danny Boyle
Stars: James Franco, Amber Tamblyn, Kate Mara
Jungle I (2017)
Certificate: G Action | Adventure | Biography
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.7/10 X  

A group of friends join a guide for a trek into the Bolivian jungle, searching for an Indian village. The men soon realize that the jungle is a difficult place to be.

Director: Greg McLean
Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Thomas Kretschmann, Joel Jackson
The Grey (2011)
Certificate: 14A Action | Adventure | Drama
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.8/10 X  

After their plane crashes in Alaska, six oil workers are led by a skilled huntsman to survival, but a pack of merciless wolves haunts their every step.

Director: Joe Carnahan
Stars: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo
Papillon I (2017)
Certificate: 14A Adventure | Biography | Crime
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.2/10 X  

Wrongfully convicted for murder, Henri Charriere forms an unlikely relationship with fellow inmate and quirky convicted counterfeiter Louis Dega, in an attempt to escape from the notorious penal colony on Devil's Island.

Director: Michael Noer
Stars: Charlie Hunnam, Damijan Oklopdzic, Christopher Fairbank
Certificate: 14A Drama | History | War
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.6/10 X  

A Russian and a German sniper play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Stars: Jude Law, Ed Harris, Joseph Fiennes
Green Card (1990)
Comedy | Drama | Romance
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.2/10 X  

A man wanting to stay in the US enters into a marriage of convenience, but it turns into more than that.

Director: Peter Weir
Stars: Gérard Depardieu, Andie MacDowell, Bebe Neuwirth
Action | Adventure | Drama
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.4/10 X  

At the end of WW2, a German POW doing hard labor in the Soviet Gulag escapes from his Siberian camp to return to Germany but he's pursued by a Soviet NKVD officer.

Director: Hardy Martins
Stars: Bernhard Bettermann, Iris Böhm, Anatoliy Kotenyov
Thriller

Two cousins with a shared secret move into a haunted castle that turns dreams and nightmares into reality.

Director: Peter Weir
Edit

Storyline

In 1941, three men attempt to flee communist Russia, escaping a Siberian gulag. This movie tells their story and that of four others who escaped with them and a teenage girl, Irena Zielinska (Saoirse Ronan), who joins them in flight. The group's natural leader is Janusz Weiszczek (Jim Sturgess), a Pole condemned by accusations secured by torturing his wife, spent much of his youth outdoors, and knows how to live in the wild. They escape under cover of a snowstorm: cynical American Mr. Smith (Ed Harris), Russian thug Valka (Colin Farrell), comedic accountant Zoran (Dragos Bucur), pastry chef Tomasz Horodinsky (Alexandru Potocean), who draws, Priest Andrejs Voss (Gustav Skarsgård), and Polish Kazik (Sebastian Urzendowsky), who suffers from night blindness. They face freezing nights, lack of food and water, mosquitoes, an endless desert, the Himalayas, as well as many moral and ethical dilemmas throughout the journey towards freedom. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>, Shahob, Bellingham, WA, US

Plot Summary | Plot Synopsis

Plot Keywords:

long walk | oasis | gulag | desert | priest | See All (86) »

Taglines:

Their escape was just the beginning


Certificate:

14A | See all certifications »

Parents Guide:

View content advisory »
Edit

Did You Know?

Trivia

Saoirse Ronan (Irena Zielinska) celebrated her sixteenth birthday on the set of this shoot. See more »

Goofs

Janusz demonstrates a method using shadows of a stick and rock to find the compass direction of south. Yet, many of the scenes show them walking in a direction inconsistent with sun angles i.e. sun at their backs, which would have them walking north. See more »

Quotes

[first lines]
[in Polish, using English subtitles]
Interrogator: [presents pen to sign confession]
Janusz: No.
Interrogator: Bring in the witness.
Janusz's Wife, 1939: [brought in]
Interrogator: Do you know this man? His name?
Janusz's Wife, 1939: Janusz Wieszczek.
Interrogator: Witness, what's your relationship with this man?
Janusz's Wife, 1939: [crying] I am his wife.
[...]
See more »

Connections

Featured in Projector: The Way Back (2011) See more »

Soundtracks

Tibet
Written by Burkhard Dallwitz
See more »

User Reviews

Solid story that looks great but is told with far too much reverence and respect – to the point of being hard to engage with emotionally
24 July 2011 | by bob the mooSee all my reviews

A group of men break free from the security and barbed wire fence of a Siberian gulag in search of freedom, however the guards are very small beer to the real prison – the ravages of nature itself and the great distance which must be crossed before they can be truly free.

Given that the focus of the film appeared to be one of endurance in the face of great suffering, this film is a bit of a hard sell for the casual viewer looking for something to watch of an evening; certainly for me this was part of the reason it took me a minute to decide to watch it. While it was an OK film, I'm not entirely sure if it was worth the two hours plus that it took to watch because it gives the viewer very little to engage with in doing so. The story is impressive in terms of the toll and also the sacrifice involved and accordingly the film wears it very seriously indeed. Hollywood excess is avoided and any crass sentimentality is absent, both of which I appreciated being omitted and restrained, and Weir documents the journey with a solemn air throughout. The first problem is that it feels like you're in a church – bowed with reverence witnessing things of importance but not really engaging with them because you're not really worthy. This feeling of worthiness really kept me at arms' length from the characters and the challenge they faced, to the point where it felt a little indifferent towards any specific one of them – not in a cruel way, but the feat appears to have been the focus rather than the people.

This is still able to make an interesting film though, because the feat is quite a thing and, as I said, the film is very careful to do it justice and not sentimentalise or trivialise it. This is my second problem with it – it probably overdoes it in this regard considering that so much of the story is questionable. I try not to let "facts" get in the way of enjoying a good movie because as a Brit I am used to seeing Hollywood twist history to make it more sellable to the mid-West etc. Thing is though, it is hard to accept that this is a good story when the film emphasises that it is true and also treats it with such reverence and respect for fear of getting it "wrong". Quite how one can get it "wrong" when so much of it is in doubt is anyone's guess, but the film takes this route and it hurts it in the process. It still makes for a very sturdy film but there without caring about the characters or really feeling in their trial, it didn't do a terrible lot else for me and I was surprised by how much of it I was just able to watch with very little involvement other than my eyes and ears.

One thing the film does do really well though is the delivery (visually speaking of course). The locations are immense and are put on the screen by director Peter Weir and cinematographer Russell Boyd in such a way that captures not only their natural beauty but also the sheer, uncompromising size of the places. It looks great throughout and I was surprised when I looked it up to find that Boyd didn't even merit an Oscar nomination for his work here (although it is an award category that has yet to give one to Roger Deakins so no surprise). It perhaps contributions to the "look at this epic story" worthiness that the film has, but in the case of the looks, it is worth it.

The cast also match the worthy tone and don't have a lot of time for character in between portraying hardship and perseverance. Sturgess struggles to really make an impression but he is OK in a central role. He is fortunate though to have Harris, Strong and Farrell with him, because they both bring presence and charisma in a way that looks easy. The rest of the group are good as well, but they also struggle to make an impression in all the worthiness.

The Way Back is an interesting film that looks great, but it is also overly worthy and serious to a point that it is hard to really engage with it because it is hard to reach the characters on the pedestal that Weir puts them on.


15 of 22 people found this review helpful.  Was this review helpful to you? | Report this
Review this title | See all 204 user reviews »

Frequently Asked Questions

See more »
Edit

Details

Language:

English | Russian | Polish | Tibetan | Mongolian

Release Date:

21 January 2011 (USA) See more »

Also Known As:

The Way Back See more »

Filming Locations:

Morocco See more »

Edit

Box Office

Budget:

$30,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$1,218,868, 23 January 2011

Gross USA:

$2,701,859

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$24,172,201
See more on IMDbPro »

Company Credits

Show more on IMDbPro »

Technical Specs

Runtime:

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1
See full technical specs »

Contribute to This Page

We've Got Your Streaming Picks Covered

Looking for some great streaming picks? Check out some of the IMDb editors' favorites movies and shows to round out your Watchlist.



Recently Viewed