{"id":244154,"date":"2011-02-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/movie-review-pow-voyage-soars-but-doesnt-fly\/"},"modified":"2011-02-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-04T08:00:00","slug":"movie-review-pow-voyage-soars-but-doesnt-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/movie-review-pow-voyage-soars-but-doesnt-fly\/","title":{"rendered":"Rese\u00f1a de la pel\u00edcula: El viaje de los prisioneros de guerra se eleva pero no vuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

Por Scott Marcas | Cr\u00edtico de cine SDUN<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Movie<\/a>
. Jim Sturgess (in mask) leads the group on a 4,000-mile trek in "The Way Back." (Photo courtesy of Newmarket Films)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How do you take a true story about a group of escapees from a Siberian gulag that trek\u00a04,000 miles overland to find freedom in India and make it dull? Begin by calling into question the historical veracity of the source material, and second attach writer\/director Peter Weir\u2018s name to the project.\u00a0 And with National Geographic Films as one of the film\u2019s producers, all you need do is substitute Poles for penguins and this rapidly disintegrates into \u201cMarch of the POWs.\u201d<\/p>\n

For years there had been a storm of controversy surrounding Slavomir Rawicz\u2019s best-selling book, \u201cThe Long Walk\u201d (1952). Was it an autobiography or a page-turning potboiler? In 2006, a BBC investigative report unearthed documentation (some in Rawicz \u2018s own words) that proved the author did not escape in 1941 as his book alleged; rather, he was released from the Soviet prison in 1942 and could not possibly have led the march.<\/p>\n

Even if \u201cThe Way Back\u201d was based on actual experiences, leave it to Peter Weir (“Fearless,” “The Truman Show”) to transform truth into truisms. Instead of taking us on a soaring adventure of the triumph of the human spirit, Weir leads his cast (and audience) by the hand through a wilderness of handsomely photographed clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

White letters on a black screen clearly spell out the long and short of it: \u201cThey had survived a 4,000-mile walk to freedom.\u201d What is the purpose of spilling a film\u2019s intendment and outcome before so much as one character is introduced? Why not begin with, \u201cHey, stupid! Here is what you\u2019ll be staring at for the next 133 minutes?\u201c Janusz (Jim Sturgess) draws a 20-year sentence after the Soviets strong-arm his wife into revealing an incriminating statement. Inside the forced-labor camp, the young Pole encounters world weary American Mr. Smith (Ed Harris) and Valka (Colin Farrell), the psycho Russian. Smith is taken by the kid\u2019s gentleness and cautions him to toughen up \u201cbecause kindness can kill you here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Together they form the most congenial band of gulag-dodgers ever to hit the screen. John Wayne would sooner take a false step than Janusz. Even Valka\u2014who is shown to be the type of guy who would take the sweater off your back only after he put a knife through your chest\u2014turns out to be a surprisingly agreeable traveling companion.<\/p>\n

Harris leads the pack with his commanding performance. Colin Farrell\u2019s generally commendable taste in scripts seems to have taken a brief vacation. Apart from a few initial blow-ups there is not a whole hell of a lot for him to do. Jim Sturgess\u2018 buttoned up brand of passive intensity worked to his advantage in \u201cHeartless,\u201d but there is nothing in this heroic Pole that made me care one way or the other. Any cheers I emitted when the houselights went up had more to do with my eagerness to exit the theater\u2014not the characters with whom I was just dragged through hell with.<\/p>\n

It would be both easy and incorrect to say \u201cThe Way Back\u201d goes nowhere. An incongruous recurring shot of a window sill with a large rock parked on it acts as the film\u2019s MacGuffin as well as the key to Janusz\u2019s ultimate act of kindness. It\u2019s a brilliant capper to a film that otherwise leaves one questioning whether or not this trip was really necessary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Way Back\u201d is currently playing exclusively at Reading\u2019s Gaslamp 15.<\/p>\n

Detalles:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rating: 1 Star<\/p>\n

Directed by Peter Weir<\/p>\n

Written by Keith R. Clarke and Peter Weir based on the novel “The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom” by Slavomir Rawicz<\/p>\n

Starring: Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Colin Farrell and Saoirse Ronan<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Scott Marks | SDUN Film Critic How do you take a true story about a group of escapees from a Siberian gulag that trek\u00a04,000 miles overland to find freedom in India and make it dull? Begin by calling into question the historical veracity of the source material, and second attach writer\/director Peter Weir\u2018s name […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1292,"featured_media":244155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Movie Review: POW voyage soars but doesn't fly","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}