One of the other main reasons that the film fails is that the result is never, ever in doubt, as much as the film might wish it were. There's a whole lot of hemming and hawing over whether or not Grant will turn Yuji over to Serlano in order to get back his own kid. Grant insists that he absolutely will, and everyone on screen seems to accept that. The audience, however, won't buy it for a minute — in movies, FBI agents don't turn one bad guy over to another bad guy in order to rescue the innocent kidnapped party. It just doesn't happen, particularly in films that are as by-the-book as this one.
The Blu-ray release contains no special whatsoever, and isn't particularly good in its own right. Much of the film is dark, but there's absolutely no differentiation between one black and the next on screen. Where does black hair end and a shirt begin? Where does the shirt end and the background begin? It's incredibly difficult to tell with the poor visual quality of the release. The sound too has some major issues. All too often, the dialogue comes out murky and muddled, Crowe talking in a large open area will sound like him in a tightly confined space talking through a thick layer of gauze. In short, neither the audio nor the video presentation do anything to convince the audience that the release is more than a way to use Crowe's star status to cash in on a poor movie.
If one is truly desperate for Russell Crowe or just curious as to what Ian Ziering looks like as a skinhead, No Way Back may have some redeeming qualities. If one is looking for decent action or an adequate cops and robbers and other robbers flick, this will not fit the bill.
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