Here's a trailer for The Way Back, Peter Weir's upcoming film about a ragtag band of men (and a girl) escaping the gulag in Siberia. It looks a fun, throwback-y adventure yarn, complete with soaring vistas and handsome, grizzled men.

Specifically Colin Farrell, who's having an interesting, quieter second leg of his career. Gone are the cheesy star-maker thrillers, replaced by nimble performances in well-chosen indies. (He was terrific in, and a deserving Golden Globe winner for, In Bruges, and had a nice, unshowy supporting bit in Crazy Heart.) Ed Harris looks typically half-bearded and flint-eyed, and that cute little Saoirse Ronin shows up as eerily adult as ever as a lost babe in the woods.

Weir hasn't made a movie since 2003's Master and Commander, so let's hope the wait was worth it. I'm excited about the Siberia stuff, if only because I've been reading Ian Frazier's Siberia essays in The New Yorker and it sounds like a brutal but oddly magical place. Sure these crazy kids eventually end up out of there and in the Mongolian desert, and later the Himalayas, but the story starts in Russia's deep freezer, and that's an interesting place, and a relatively unexamined time period (in film at least), to begin. This thing has finally scored a release date that gives it Oscar eligibility, so it could be kicking around come awards season. If only the title didn't make me think of the third row of seats in a minivan.

[via The Playlist]