The Way Back

Acclaimed Australian director Peter Weir chronicles the awe-inspiring epic tale of POWs who escaped from one of Stalin's gulags in Siberia—trudging 4,000 miles to Mongolia on a journey that took them past the Great Wall of China, across the Gobi Desert, and into the Himalayas to freedom. Adapted by Weir and co-screenwriter Keith Clark from Slavomir Rawicz's The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom, as well as other real-life accounts, the narrative opens in 1939, as Janusz (Jim Sturgess) is interrogated in Poland by a Russian officer who accuses him of espionage after Janusz's wife—under torture—informs on him. Sent to a labor camp, Janusz meets other prisoners, including Mr. Smith (Ed Harris), an enigmatic American structural engineer; and Valka (Colin Farrell), a vicious street thug. What they share is a fervent desire to escape—which seven prisoners do during a snowstorm, dashing into the dense forest. With little food or equipment and no certainty about their location, the troupe heads south, constantly threatened not only by fear of discovery but also from dehydration, starvation, and hypothermia. A few predictably perish, but those who remain reluctantly pick up Irena (Saoirse Ronan), an orphan who artfully elicits personal information about each of her companions. Filming in Bulgaria, Morocco, and India, Weir focuses more on the debilitating trek than individual characterizations in this spectacular-looking epic. Recommended. (S. Granger)