I saw "The Way Back", starring Ben Affleck-Justice League, Daredevil; Janina Gavankar-Blindspotting, True Blood_tv; Michaela Watkins-The Unicorn_tv, How To Be a Latin Lover and Al Madrigal-Night School, Wizards of Waverly Place_tv.
This is a movie about grief, depression and alcoholism with a little basketball action thrown in for good measure. Ben plays a man that spends his time drinking a lot. At first, you have no idea why-but you do learn the reasons, eventually. Janina plays his wife, who lives apart from Ben because of his drinking and Michaela plays Ben's sister, who is also concerned for Ben. When Ben was in high school, he was a star basketball player with a great future in the sport. But then, he suddenly quit playing. He just stopped and never played again-you learn the reasons for that later, too. Flash forward to the present, he is offered a job of coaching kids to play basketball at his old Alma mater because of his past at the school. Al plays the assistant coach of the less than great team-they have not won any games since Ben went to school there. Can Ben turn his life around and quit drinking? Can Ben turn the team around and win some basketball games? Can you predict how this movie will turn out? Ben does a pretty good alcoholic-I guess he drew on some personal experience for that one.
It's rated "R" for language and sexual content-no nudity-and has a running time of 1 hour & 48 minutes.
It's not one that I would buy on DVD but if you are in the mood to see an actor poor his soul into the role-maybe for an Oscar?-you might like it enough to rent it.
Review of The Way Back
