The Way Back  ★★★½

BEN Affleck’s much-publicised struggle with alcoholism is laid bare in The Way Back.

Contrary to what you might think, this 2020 drama about a former basketball player’s personal redemption isn’t based on a true story.

Nor is it meant to be based on Affleck’s own life, but it tackles head-on the daily struggle the actor and many others face in controlling their demons.

The film works extremely well on two levels – as a rousing sports drama and examination of the problems of addiction.

Affleck plays Jack Cunningham, a separated working-class everyman who was a champion high school basketballer.

With his potential unrealised and his wife estranged, Jack has turned to drink and secretely tops up throughout the day, even while working at heights in his job as a construction worker.

He spends his nights with a small group of regulars at the same neighbourhood bar that his father frequented for much of his upbringing. He is even brought home and put to bed some nights by the same drinking buddy who used to help his father to bed when he was too drunk to drive.

Jack is the kind of publicly likable but inwardly tormented guy who downs a Bud while having his daily shower. His long bouts of emptying the fridge most nights are particularly difficult to watch as the lumbering giant topples, both physically and mentally.

At his old high school the team is struggling and the coach has quit. Jack gets a call from the priest who is the school principal asking him to step in.

Of course Jack is torn by a range of conflicting emotions but is also faced with a priest who isn’t used to anyone, including former students, saying no to him and God.

Jack reluctantly agrees and is forced to deal with a diverse group of young men equally struggling for recognition, both personal and as a group.

While the arc of this story might resemble dozens of other sports bio-pics, the nature of the characters and focus of the narrative is more along the lines of that great Darren Aronofsky film The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke.

The Way Back isn’t as good, but the combination of Affleck’s performance, a terrific script by Brad Inglesby, who also wrote the under-rated Out of the Furnace from 2013, and Gavin O’Connor’s assured direction, makes the film stand-out in almost every aspect.

It’s one of the best performances of Affleck’s career, alongside Gone Girl, Argo, The Town and Good Will Hunting, and O’Connor’s best film since Warrior in 2011.

Well worth a watch.