The words "Based on a true story" at the beginning of a movie should always be taken with a pinch of salt - filmmakers are prone to be rather liberal with "truth" - however you choose to define it - often embellishing the tale to make it more cinematic and fit neatly into a conventional narrative structure. In the case of The Way Back, the authenticity of the source material itself has frequently been called into question. Loosely based on The Long Walk by S‚awomir Rawicz, Peter Weir's The Way Back begins in a Soviet gulag in Siberia, that vast region in the north of Russia renowned for being one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. Polish POW Janusz Wieszczek (Jim Sturgess) joins up with three other inmates, including an American engineer (Ed Harris), an actor (Mark Strong) and a mean Russian convict (Colin Farrell) and escapes from the prison. To say that they have a long and arduous journey before them is an understatement. With predictably stunning cinematography from Weir's regular DOP Russell Boyd, ranging from the frozen Siberian mountains to the Gobi Desert, The Way Back infuses the survival tale with a measured political undercurrent. While it isn't Weir's greatest movie, it's characteristically elegant and features strong performances across the board, notably from Sturgess and Saoirse Ronan as the young orphaned Polish girl who joins the men on their journey.
