A Great Adventure

Rating: 8/10 (26 April 2012)

The book is a can't put it down page turner which has been faithfully adapted to the big screen. A Polish prisoner of war who was imprisoned at a Soviet gulag in Siberia wrote the original journal which became an international best seller in the 1950s. Director Peter Weir has done a fine job in retaining the feel of the book, The Long Walk.
The lead, Janusz, is placed in the camp in 1939 and meets an American, Mr. Smith(Ed Harris), an actor, Khabarov, Valka(Colin Farrell), the only real criminal, along with a cook, a priest, and an accountant. They put together a plan to travel south to Mongolia, passing Lake Baikal. The escape begins on the night of a blizzard and one of the men gets lost and is found frozen to death. The trek is a dangerous and deadly one, knocking them off one after the other.
A young Polish girl, Irena, meets them along the way telling the tale of her parent's murder by Russian soldiers and her harrowing escape. She later admits that her mother and father were actually arrested as spies.
The group encounter a sandstorm, suffer starvation and dehydration and some of them finally reach the Himalayas with Nepal and India within sight. Weir chose a first rate cast, my favorite being Colin Farrell as the unscrupulous criminal Valka, who provides some much needed comic relief. The scenery is breathtaking and The Way Back is one adventure you will never forget.