Rebound: THE WAY BACK

The Way Back is a character study in the structure of a sport’s movie. It's the kind of movie we say they don't make anymore, a terrific work of formula and feeling, and about recognizable people with real problems. In its attentive way, attuned to the addiction suffered by its main character, the film doubles up on underdogs. We find a man drawn to the beer bottle to drown out disappointments, purposefully narrowing his life to his hard work on a construction crew and his drunken nights passing out alone. Years before, he used to be a high school basketball star, and so when his old school calls him to take over as head coach of a team in the midst of a decades long losing streak — the old coach had a heart attack and has to withdraw midseason — he reluctantly agrees. It sets up an easy Hollywood arc, with a ragtag group of underperforming athletes and a middle-aged man gripped by regret and alcoholism have to help each other find a way forward, growing together and teaching each other. But though the film takes on that shape, through the hard-won victories on and off the court, it’s far more interested in the people involved. Though it hardly lacks for basketball action and locker room pep talks and heart to hearts with troubled youths, and builds up the typical compelling head of steam as rivals look down on them and the playoffs loom, the movie holds the coach in focus at the key moment, the scoreboard blurred in the background. In fact, though the ending is rousing and emotionally satisfying, as I sit here typing these words I can’t even remember if we hear the final score. Director Gavin O’Connor is no stranger to the genre, what with his great 2004 based-on-a-true-hockey-game Miracle and fine 2011 brother-versus-brother boxing movie Warrior. Here he and his team bring solid meat-and-potatoes studio craftsmanship to every polished moment of Brad Ingelsby’s sturdy screenplay. And he services the expected beats by underplaying them — scores revealed in a melancholy freeze frame of on-screen text, or a deft cut away from a reaction — while building up an involving emotional experience.

It helps that Ben Affleck, delivering one of his finest performances, is in the lead. He brings sad eyes to the role, unspoken depression burbling under his closeups. There’s a scene where he sits in his truck in the parking lot of a bar, and we can tell he’s debating whether or not to go in based solely on the expression on his face. It’s neither overplayed nor telegraphed; he’s simply being, letting the conflict play out naturally, subtly, a shift of weight, a tipping of emphasis, a silence, a pause. He feels real. So, too, is his physicality, carrying with it the full burden of his own star persona — here’s the champion who was, the box office draw and Oscar winner whose megawatt celebrity has been dimmed through the vagaries of gossip headlines and various personal problems playing out in public. We can see in his role the powerhouse this new coach once was, the sturdy confidence of his frame balancing on unsteady feet, tough and talented, but clearly struggling. When he steps back on the court, he regains some of his command. If only he can stay on the wagon long enough to take similar charge of his life. The cast around him is evocative, painted in broad strokes, enough to get the picture. There’s a kind assistant coach (Al Madrigal), a worried sister (Michaela Watkins), a tentative ex-wife (Janina Gavankar). As painful moments of backstory are revealed, it’s clear the man’s profound pain will not be taken away by drinking another shot at the bar nor by watching his players take a winning shot on the court. There are no simple answers here. No one — not him, not his players, not his family, not his community — is transformed overnight. But they can be set on the right path. It’s not for nothing that his day job finds him helping construct a new highway overpass. It’s slow going, piece by piece. But maybe, if all goes well, in the end, there’ll be a new way back.

After Hours: RUN ALL NIGHT

Like all the best Liam Neeson action/thrillers of late, Run All Night taps into a deep well of depression and sadness. It’s brisk and exciting, but suffused with reluctance, concerned with matters of broken homes and beaten psyches. Neeson brings a certain amount of dignity to these man-of-action roles, a great actor refusing to coast in material others might view as merely paychecks. He can see the tragedy here. It’s a big part of what makes The Grey, Non-Stop, A Walk Among the Tombstones, and the best bits of Taken such crackling entertainments. They’re elevated by solid direction smartly focused on Neeson’s weary gravitas, a man fighting through existential sorrow to do what he feels must be done.

In Run All Night, he plays an alcoholic ex-hit man trying to wrestle with the demons of his past. He’s estranged from his grown son (Joel Kinnaman), who knows the truth about him and has run towards respectability, working two jobs to make ends meet for his young family. When complications arise and the shooting starts, we find ourselves in an exciting actioner about bad dads and shattered sons trying their best to heal understandably troubled relationships. It’s gruff tough-guy poetry, family melodrama through car chases and shootouts, a gripping violent thriller lamenting the difficulties in breaking cycles of violence.

Neeson’s boss (Ed Harris) has a son (Boyd Holbrook) the same age as his. This young man is the opposite of Kinnaman, trying to be even half the gangster his father was. This leads him to killing a rival drug dealer, a crime Kinnaman happens to witness. Talk about your bad coincidences. So Neeson must scramble to save his son as the full weight of his old criminal friends’ organization swings down to silence the witness. This time, it’s personal. Neeson and Kinnaman race around a New York City night, illuminated by scattered thunderstorms to enhance the drama, trying to stay alive. Around seemingly every corner they find crooked cops, trained killers, and old friends who are suddenly, reluctantly, new enemies (an ensemble full of small roles for Bruce McGill, Vincent D’Onofrio, Common, Genesis Rodriguez, and Nick Nolte).

What’s so satisfying about this set-up is the way screenwriter Brad Ingelsby and director Jaume Collet-Serra make the pulp melodrama as crackling as the action. Terrifically tense scenes of suspense and violence turn into moments of interpersonal conflicts, atonement, and reconciliation as great actors sit and work out characters’ problems. Collet-Serra, who has been grinding out clever and blindsiding impactful genre fare for a while now, quietly becoming one of our most reliable B-movie auteurs with the likes of Orphan and Neeson’s aforementioned Non-Stop, makes space in a film of hard-charging grit for quiet emotional beats. These moments in which characters engage in off-the-cuff soul bearing one-on-one exchanges play just as effectively as the hand-to-hand combat, vehicular mayhem, and discharging firearms.

Collet-Serra’s camera swoops through New York streets, connecting scenes with a CGI Google Street View aesthetic, but Anton Corbijn collaborator Martin Ruhe’s cinematography settles into dancing grain crisply cut together by editor Dirk Westervelt. The filmmakers know how to make a weighty action contraption look great and really move. It starts slow, but once it takes off it builds an irresistible momentum grounded in slick crime drama stoicism, the kind that has as much fun conjuring the dread of violence as the act itself. Whether we're running through an evacuating apartment building tracking multiple deadly cat-and-mouse games, or sitting behind a curtain hoping a bad guy won't think to look there, the film builds its tension out of what might happen, even as it gets satisfaction setting off the fireworks when happenings do erupt.

There’s a moral gravity here, of a deadly sort, that emphasizes the terror as well as the thrill. The filmmakers are wise to key into Neeson’s form, the weariness and grief conjured up by a slump of his shoulders, or in a soft gravely sigh. He’s playing a man clearly skilled in the art of effective violence, and yet can now only summon up the power to put those skills to use to protect those he loves. It’s a dependable formula, and in the hands of such skilled practitioners of the craft, it’s a fine example of its type.