Peter Weir's first film since Master and Commander nearly 8 years ago is based on the memoirs published in 1956 by Slavomir Rawicz called The Long Walk: The True Story Of A Trek to Freedom. It has since been reported by a BBC documentary, that Slavomir made the whole story up, having been released from prison in 1942. Either way the book makes a great story for a film. There are some great performances in this film from the likes of Ed Harris (Trueman show), Colin Farrell (London Boulevard) and Jim Sturgess (One Day) but I didn't feel as much of a connection with the characters as I was anticipating.
The characters make a great escape from their prison in Siberia and travel through the Gobi Desert, Tibet and the Himalayas before reaching their final destination India. As the men trek through the different types of terrain they pick up a polish girl (Sairose Ronan) who decides to join them in their journey for freedom.
It makes for a pretty entertaining journey and some of the backgrounds are stunning but it feels like the audience is too far way from bonding with the characters and we as a audience seem to be kept at a distance throughout the film. Maybe this was the direction Peter wanted to take but I felt most of the characters were under developed and very typical of movies (the hero, the thief, the girl etc etc) this made it very difficult to get into their story like other survival movies like Alive and 127 Hours. Peter Weir has made some excellent movies including Trueman Show and Master and Commander but I feel a slight disapointment with his latest film. The Way Back is available now on DVD and Blu-Ray
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