The Way Back (2010)

THE WAY BACK  (2010)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Peter Weir
    Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Saoirse Ronan,
    Colin Farrell, Mark Strong, Dragos Bucur
An exciting, old-fashioned survival story about a handful of prisoners who escape from a Soviet gulag and trek 4,000 miles to India by hiking through Siberia, Mongolia, China and Tibet. It's a heroic journey, and there's not much in the way of physical hardship these characters don't endure: cold, heat, thirst, starvation, snow, mosquitoes and dust. They're political prisoners mostly, enemies of the state. One's an artist. Another's a priest. Guys who were unlucky enough to attract the attention of Stalin's secret police. Only one, a brute played by Colin Farrell, is a real criminal. Jim Sturgess is a Pole convicted of espionage because his wife was tortured into testifying against him. Ed Harris is an American known only as "Mr. Smith". Saoirse Ronan plays a fugitive of uncertain origin who joins them along the way. The locations are convincing. You can feel the blistering heat of the desert, and the cold looks cold enough to kill you. The prison camp scenes are horrifying, an unrelieved vision of hell from which (supposedly) there is no escape. Make it through the first couple of reels and you'll know one thing for sure: Death would be better than life in the camps.