The Way Back Is Mostly a Nice Movie About Ben Affleck [review]

The Way Back Is Mostly a Nice Movie About Ben Affleck [review]

Against a background of redemption, an effective basketball film that the presence of Ben Affleck stimulates with emotion.

If you like Le Grand Défi (2007), Will Hunting (1998), and Coach Carter (2005), don’t miss The Way Back, tonight on Canal +. Première recommends it, especially if you like its lead actor, Ben Affleck.

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Here’s our review: Grieving ex-basketball star Jack Cunningham drowns his grief in alcohol, routine and self-loathing. One evening, a priest entrusted him with an important mission: to coach the basketball team where he played in high school. Reluctant at first, Jack sees it as a way to clean up his life and start over. But at what cost? Gavin O’Connor (who had already shown in the sports film with Warrior ) first signs an effective “ coach film ”, with Affleck, cap screwed on the skull, perfect as a blue-collar in free throws. Failing to be very original, everything is here in its place: the drama of basketball (the free throws, therefore, the ball which bounces on the circle, the shots with the buzzer), the small town which does not laugh with the high school team, and the pooch style of the coach who doubts, dodges before being hated to better weld the team and finally be buried under a torrent of love. But The Way Back is above all an (another) nice movie about Affleck: how many times has the actor taken this “ way back ”? His career has been conceived from the start as a series of failures (sometimes as bitter as they are unfair) and rebirths. The story of Cunningham is obviously that of the actor, who was (is still?) An obstacle course to try to always restart better. The link between reality and fiction gives a resonance and a certain thickness to a film that would otherwise remain (sympathetically) at the level of the cliché.