Critic Reviews

Director and co-writer/producer Gavin O’Connor’s meticulous drama feels authentic all the way around. The basketball feels real. The high school kids seem real. Jack’s relationship with his estranged wife Angela (Janina Gavankar) is very believable.

Muscularly directed by Gavin O’Connor, whose facility with emotional dramas with sports connections goes as far back as 2004’s Miracle, The Way Back is elevated and transformed by one of Ben Affleck’s strongest and most convincing performances.

Taken on its own terms, the film is beautifully crafted, a sequence of events, many of them stirring, along a road to redemption that intersects with a winning group of high-school kids on a losing basketball team.

O’Connor’s work here behind the camera is equal to Affleck’s in front of it, as the two of them navigate this character’s complex minefield of shortcomings both earned and adopted, never letting him off the hook but attempting to explore and understand how and why these destructive patterns of behavior settle into rhythm.

Between the known metatext and Affleck’s bone-deep commitment, this moving central performance largely purges the film of its high potential for the maudlin.

The Way Back shares those convictions and themes, but its greatest asset is its honesty.

A movie about deep regrets, taking them head-on, forgiving oneself and more, The Way Back, on paper, has so much potential for clichés about demons in a bottle. Instead, and triumphantly earned, this affecting path to redemption is a piercing portrait of man and actor who, when the clock’s winding down, can drain the shot that matters most.

The Way Back is a somber sports drama more interested in exploring the plight of its hero than in just the big games.

Affleck gives the impression of intimate familiarity with the anguish and self-disgust that dominate Jack’s life; this character and project clearly meant something important to him, as the title bluntly suggests, and he gives it his all without overdoing the melodrama.

The Way Back has an indescribable something that’s missing from so many modern movies. It’s filled with emotional textures, most notably the serrated edge of shame.