The bodged Eastern European accent has made a resurgence in pop culture. From Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV to Daniel Craig in Defiance, the great and the good are queuing up to wrap their mouths around some rolling Rs and hard consonants while avoiding the temptation to add ‘ski’ to the end of every other word. The Way Back is an indication that this fascination with the former USSR is not abating and gives us a protracted look at an allegedly true story of enduring courage against the odds. It’s the stuff movie gold is made of, but while its scale is vast it ends up being a great sleepy Sunday movie rather than a tear-jerking must-see epic.

The Way Back follows a rag-tag group of Gulag-bound prisoners who have been persecuted by Stalinist Russia and dumped in the middle of nowhere in a facility which hardly needs fences or guards given the harshness of the winter weather. Janusz (Jim Sturgess) arrives fresh from being sold out by his wife and quickly finds a group of men willing to work with him on an escape plan. Thankfully this is no Great Escape-style film, and the process of breaking out is entirely ignored in favour of focusing on the subsequent journey of 4000 miles, which sees a select number of survivors make it to India, crossing the Himalayas in the process.

Amongst the band of brothers are Ed Harris as Mr Smith, a stoic American who binds the group together, and Colin Farrell as gappy-toothed Russian hood Valka who escapes the Gulag simply to avoid a gambling debt. Harris does his usual wide-faced best to bring the part some gravitas while Farrell goes in the other direction, becoming a cross between the Artful Dodger and a pantomime villain. This makes for some fun moments, but a few deliberate one-liners fail to find their mark.

On the journey the motley crew grows with the addition of Irena, an orphaned teenager presented as almost a messianic figure who brings out a mix of reverence and protective aggression amongst the men. We’re told at the beginning that not everyone will make it and this does add a little tension but the fatalities which occur are never melodramatic, adding intrigue without ever instilling tension in the audience.

The Way Back is virtually tepid throughout, but it doesn’t verge into boredom and once it arrives on DVD or as a Christmas movie in the coming years it will be worth checking out.