I’ll give The Way Back one thing: Peter Weir definitely took his time telling this story, and I respect that. The problem is he didn’t fill that time with much of anything. The set-up is poor, and there is not nearly enough interesting dialog-based detail, telling us things like where they are, how long each segment of the journey is taking, how their supplies and clothing are holding up – anything to give the journey some texture! It gets boring watching these guys stumble around aimlessly in the middle of nowhere.

Character development is sparse and inadequate. For example, the four guys who were supposed to be friends didn’t even seem like they knew each other once the journey started, and as for sketching the individual personalities in the group I can report that two of the guys I never was able to tell apart, all the way to the end of the movie. I still don’t know who was who. You never bond with any of these guys because no time is spent making any of them seem interesting. This is just bad.

This movie needed some serious editing. I like that Weir tried to capture in great detail their endless travail in escaping for Siberia, but it should not seem to the viewer like we are actually walking the entire way through the Mongolian desert with them! I think that capturing the boredom of such a journey is something that is best done implicitly.

Also, the accents in this film are a bit out of control. My wife and I had to keep backing up the DVD and playing scenes over to understand what they were saying. Couple this with their incessant mumbling and it makes for an arduous viewing experience, especially in the beginning when the only interesting dialog is taking place.

Still, despite all this, I have seen worse movies this year and last year. Even with its slow pace, poor character development, and sub-par dialog (after a while it’s reduced to “even though we have water, without food we die” and “if we don’t find water soon, we’ll die!” and so on) the film was still somewhat interesting, although this may have largely been because they tell you in the beginning that only three make it. You basically endure the whole film just to see who croaks, ’cause God knows they aren’t saying anything interesting to each other, and no one is getting laid either, that’s for sure. Now that I think of it, that was very “reality TV” of Peter Weir to tell us that up front. It reminds me of a reality show I saw advertised before some movie last year, where people were doing some sort of extreme combat – in the advertisement, the one guy says “there’s gonna be one serious fatality … I just hope it’s not me.” If this ridiculous line is all that was conjured up for me by watching The Way Back, I think that tells you something about the artistic merits of this film.

I give up. It seems I simply cannot defend this movie. I’ll just end here by saying it was a good story idea (whether or not it was actually true) that came together in a rather bland and uninspired fashion. It is not a terrible film. If you are choosing between this and Cats and Dogs: Pussy Galore, maybe pick this.