Unbreakable

Yes, I know I skipped a couple of films between The Sixth Sense and The Village. I'm making up for it and at the end of the next review, I will be back up to chronological order when it comes to Shymalan films.

Unbreakable was the second of Shymalan's big budget films. It came out a year after the 1999 hit, The Sixth Sense and I think a lot of people were expecting great things from Shyamalan. Did they get those great things?

Unbreakable starts with David Dunn (played by Bruce Willis) being involved with a train accident. It is a horrendous accident and there were no survivors, except for David. And David had absolutely no injuries after the accident. He returns to his family comprised of his son Joseph (played by Spencer Treat Clark) and his wife who he is having marital issues with (played by Robin Wright).

Soon a strange message comes to him from a man calling himself Mr. Glass. Mr. Glass, or Mr. Price (played by Samuel L Jackson) is a man with a rare disorder that makes his bones very fragile and easy to break. He is obsessed with comic books and he discusses the possibility with David that he may have incredible abilities since he survived the train accident and has not gotten sick.

The rest of the film is David's origin story to become a vigilante superhero.

And I don't know what it is about superhero origin films but we continue to flock to these stories because they are just good. And I will give him credit, M Night Shyamalan filmed this origin story in a really unique and creative way. My favorite scene probably is when David is lifting weights (for some reason not keeping track of how many weights his son is putting on) and he realizes he can bench A LOT of weight. It's a really genuine scene between this guy and his son and that's pretty much the meat and potatoes of this entire movie.

I can talk a lot about the relationship between David and Mr. Glass, but there are some great scenes between Bruce Willis and Spencer Treat Clark that really work in this film. I think Bruce Willis needs to do more movies where he plays opposite a child because he seems to do really well in those films. Only the heart of a child could break that gruff tough guy facade.

Now I have a theory that the less hair Bruce Willis has the less he cares about his role. Unbreakable is not quite the exception but it's also not a bad performance. I think it was kind of the start of the starring method for Willis. It works in this film because it's Shyamalan and a lot of his films are more about the silence of the scene rather than the acting. But I won't say this performance was Willis's best. It was fine, better than a lot of his other ones, but you can still see the bald empathy.

Then you've got Spencer Treat Clark. And I do kind of feel bad for this kid. M Night Shyamalan comes off the critical acclaim of The Sixth Sense, working with a phenomenal child actor like Haley Joel Osment, and then this kid is unfairly expected to blow away the audience in the same way even though they are two very different characters and two very different movies.

I mean if you're talking about child performances, obviously Osment blows him out of the water because Clark's performance is... fine. Not great. But fine. I watched The Sixth Sense last month, I felt like my preconceived notions about this film comparing weren't there, but I guess it was because I couldn't help but say to myself (again, unfairly) "This role would probably be better if it had gone to Osment".

I don't think that was ever an option and it would have held its own issues of repetition, but you see the bar this kid was held to. He gives an okay performance. Not great, not horrible. Just good.

Robin Wright gives a good performance too. She's not a huge part of the film but you can't really NOT like Robin Wright because she's a great actress.

Then there's Mr. Glass.

Now this is difficult because I'll be honest, I don't totally understand Mr. Glass's character. That's partly the reason I like him but the twist in this movie is a little bit weird and doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Think of Mr. Glass as a mentally unstable, handicapped, Nick Fury. Yeah the two characters are totally different but he is helping David become the superhero he's meant to be. He's doing it all the while being this very sympathetic character that you can't help but wonder if he's crazy or not. You eventually figure out that David does have these abilities but you can't help but feel like Mr. Glass still has a few screws loose and he's probably not someone you wanna have your kid around.

The relationship between David and Mr. Glass plays out really well too. Mr. Glass is instrumental to the creation of the superhero that David becomes and I really enjoyed these two working together.

I guess the issue that I have with Jackson's character is that not enough is known about him. The movie focuses on Willis so much that when things turn and focus on Jackson, I don't totally follow the reasoning for some of his choices. While I like the story with Willis, I feel like there's a more dramatic and sympathetic story about a guy who has very fragile bones, and just wants to fit in and belong. Willis brings your typical comic book superhero story, Jackson brings something different.

So the character performances are pretty good. The story is intriguing, what is there not to like about this film?

Well there was a reason that M Night Shyamalan gained so much popularity from 1999 to 2003 and that was because he not only had creative and unique story lines accompanied by good performances, he also had/has a very distinct style of directing. And that style is very apparent in Unbreakable.

If you pause at certain scenes you can just tell that cameras were being placed in weird places, getting interesting angles and seeing things from different perspectives. And while that's intriguing and interesting to look at at times, Unbreakable is where he kind of started to play with that unique style and just make weird shots just for the sake of having weird shots.

I will say for Unbreakable, the majority of the shots work. There are a lot of scenes that work really well because they're shot from behind a curtain waving in the wind. I don't know how he was able to do some of the stuff he did so perfectly but it creates a sense of claustrophobia that is really unique and well executed.

However, when those unique shots are constantly happening and everything has to be shot from a creative and claustrophobic angle, it makes casual viewers like myself a little nauseous and comes off forced at times.

I'm saying this because I watched Signs right after this film and so I got a pretty big dose of that cinematography at it's peak and it's pretty jarring. Like I said, it works in Unbreakable about 90% of the time. But I understand where the charm of that style started to wear on people and it lost it's creative nature.

The twist at the end is okay... Again, I feel bad because even 17 years later, this movie is unfairly compared to The Sixth Sense. It's not fair to compare the two, but this movie will unfortunately always be known as the movie that followed up The Sixth Sense and the truth is, it's not as good. The twist is a little bit confusing and even looking into it later on, there are better twists that have happened in other movies, putting aside Shyamalan films. 

But as an individual movie. It's pretty good. I think a lot of people went into this movie thinking it was going to be a dramatic film with a supernatural twist like The Sixth Sense was and instead got a superhero film, but maybe that's the benefit of watching it years later and where comparing it to The Sixth Sense really doesn't have its merit. Say what you will about Shyamalan, he really jumps from topic to topic. The Sixth Sense was about ghosts, Unbreakable is about superheroes, Signs is about aliens, The Village... well The Village was about something right?

But what did you think of Unbreakable? I tried to keep the comparisons to The Sixth Sense to a minimum but it's a lot harder than you think it would be. I want to hear your thoughts. Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. Yeah... in 2017 unfortunately this is what a lot of people think of when they hear Unbreakable. It just has such a catchy theme. Enjoy!