I must admit I am a sucker for good sports movies, but frankly there aren’t that many good basketball movies that actually involve good acting as well as good action, though Hoosiers is an exception to this rule. Ben Afleck’s The Way Back is an exception. Over time, Ben Afleck has become a good actor, though of course we could list some sad or bad movies he has been in. This particular movie tells the story of an out of shape former basketball star of the CYO leagues in California who never played college ball, from personal choice. The man called Jack Cunningham was all world in high school, but he has a lot of baggage, from neglect from his father, to his problem drinking, to the loss of his son to cancer at a young age, to separation from his wife. Indeed, a lot to overcome. And then he gets an invitation to become the coach of a rock bottom Catholic team at Bishop Hayes High. As you might imagine, the story line is the team becomes the comeback kids, under Jack’s training and tutelage, and make the playoffs for the first time since Jack played for the team in the 1990s. Afleck is convincing in his portrayal of a man battling his demons, and fortunately in this movie the story line is not ‘and they all lived happily ever after. It’s much more realistic than that. This is two hours of a good story well played, and it has some good psychological complexity. I especially enjoyed the mentoring of the kids into decent players under the coach’s regimens. During a time which usually amounts to a good movie desert, this movie is worth seeing, though not a classic.
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