. At this point, the story of his roller-coaster addictions, his on-again, off-again, and finally broken marriage to Jennifer Garner, and his whole fractured-daddy-and-sorrowful-ex-husband vibe of crash-and-burn celebrity tragedy feels like some cautionary case study of a dude who had it all and kept figuring out a way to lose it.
That’s a fair, and compelling, hook for a movie. But there’s one way that it raises the bar: There have been many films about alcoholism, and based on our knowledge of what Affleck has been through, we go into “The Way Back” eager to touch a raw nerve of experience. It’s there, at moments, in Affleck’s performance, and the film is well-staged by director Gavin O’Connor.
Your review of this shouldn’t need to compare it to his real life struggles.