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The Way Back, 2020
Jack (Ben Affleck) was a hot-shot high school basketball player who walked away from a free ride at a good school and now lives a life of barely-functional alcoholism. When his alma mater asks if he would like to step in to coach their boys' basketball team, Jack accepts the job and finally gets some spark back into his life. But the demons that drove Jack to despair in the first place rear their heads again, and Jack's newfound sense of purpose is threatened.
I had a co-worker who was a lovely woman with a hard life who died of alcoholism, and this portrait of someone drinking to numb emotional pain felt eerily accurate. As the movie goes on, we understand the source of Jack's pain better and we even come to see why it is that the people who love him allow his self-destructive behavior to continue. At first the film threatens to be one of those stories where simple discovering a passion allows a person to do a total 180. I'm not saying that can't be true for some people, but it usually doesn't work that way and I appreciated that the film acknowledged that.
There are a lot of layers to what is happening with Jack, and while the film can't avoid a few "underdog team coached by curmudgeon" tropes, I appreciated the way that the film portrayed Jack's at times desperate desire for the young players not to repeat his own mistakes. He's caught in an uncomfortable place between assuming the position of a father figure to them and also seeing himself constantly reflected in them and their potential. There's a running joke about Jack's use of profanity and the team's chaplain being exasperated about it. It's a bit goofy. But I liked how as the film goes on, Jack's profanity stops being directed at the players. His first big speech to them is just a useless "do you have a pair or are you actually girls?" demeaning type lecture that does nothing to actually help them play better. The shift in Jack's language is a neat metric of how he comes to have higher expectations for the players and for himself.
Affleck's lead performance is appropriately world-weary, with a simmering anger that's barely kept tamped down by the waves upon waves of alcohol he pours into his body. The supporting cast also does a good job, especially Al Madrigal as Dan, Jack's assistant coach.
Not necessarily breaking new ground, but solid stuff.
The Way Back, 2020
Jack (Ben Affleck) was a hot-shot high school basketball player who walked away from a free ride at a good school and now lives a life of barely-functional alcoholism. When his alma mater asks if he would like to step in to coach their boys' basketball team, Jack accepts the job and finally gets some spark back into his life. But the demons that drove Jack to despair in the first place rear their heads again, and Jack's newfound sense of purpose is threatened.
I had a co-worker who was a lovely woman with a hard life who died of alcoholism, and this portrait of someone drinking to numb emotional pain felt eerily accurate. As the movie goes on, we understand the source of Jack's pain better and we even come to see why it is that the people who love him allow his self-destructive behavior to continue. At first the film threatens to be one of those stories where simple discovering a passion allows a person to do a total 180. I'm not saying that can't be true for some people, but it usually doesn't work that way and I appreciated that the film acknowledged that.
There are a lot of layers to what is happening with Jack, and while the film can't avoid a few "underdog team coached by curmudgeon" tropes, I appreciated the way that the film portrayed Jack's at times desperate desire for the young players not to repeat his own mistakes. He's caught in an uncomfortable place between assuming the position of a father figure to them and also seeing himself constantly reflected in them and their potential. There's a running joke about Jack's use of profanity and the team's chaplain being exasperated about it. It's a bit goofy. But I liked how as the film goes on, Jack's profanity stops being directed at the players. His first big speech to them is just a useless "do you have a pair or are you actually girls?" demeaning type lecture that does nothing to actually help them play better. The shift in Jack's language is a neat metric of how he comes to have higher expectations for the players and for himself.
Affleck's lead performance is appropriately world-weary, with a simmering anger that's barely kept tamped down by the waves upon waves of alcohol he pours into his body. The supporting cast also does a good job, especially Al Madrigal as Dan, Jack's assistant coach.
Not necessarily breaking new ground, but solid stuff.