Fulfilling My Duty

I figure I'm obligated to watch (and blog about) any movie remotely related to long-distance backpacking, so I went and saw The Way Back, based on Slavomir Rawicz's The Long Walk, today. I didn't like the book, and based on all the reviews I'd read, I didn't expect the movie to be good. I was not disappointed. And by that I mean the reviews were correct; the movie was not good. Coming from Peter Weir, director of Master and Commander, The Truman Show, Dead Poets Society, The Mosquito Coast, and Witness, this was a pretty big misstep. Basically everything about the movie was ham-handed: the dialogue, the characters' relations with one another, even the anti-communist message (the characters escape from a Siberian labor camp and walk across Siberia, Mongolia, and Tibet to their freedom in India.) I was pretty much bored out of my mind and kept watching it just for the scenery, which was good, but not amazing (watch any Zhang Yimou or Ang Lee for better mountains or Lawrence of Arabia or English Patient for better desert scenes.) Then the credits weren't very helpful in discerning where the filming was done, so I was even more disappointed. Oh well. At least now I have faithfully discharged my duties.

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