The Way Back

A hodgepodge of multinational escapees from a World War II-era gulag (including a Pole framed as a spy, a Russian thug, a priest and a pastry chef who likes to draw) trudge through Siberia, the Gobi Desert and the Himalayas in a grueling quest for freedom that is littered with casualties. Six-time Oscar-nominated Aussie director Peter Weir has reworked Slawomir Rawicz’s 1956 memoir The Long Walk (which has been challenged as a fraud) into a panoramic feast that speaks volumes about human endurance but, after an intensely harrowing introduction, rather clinically and sometimes clumsily develops its characters, dramatic resonance and time-lapse transitions. The film is driven by elements in which nature doubles as a jailer, kindness can have a terminal downside and people cannot forgive themselves for actions committed under extreme duress—even though others do.