Sun 7 Dec 2014
An SF Movie Review: UNBREAKABLE (2000).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , SF & Fantasy films[14] Comments
UNBREAKABLE. Touchstone Pictures, 2000. Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright Penn, Spencer Treat Clark. Screenwriter & director: M. Night Shyamalan.
This was director Shyamalan’s followup to his massively successful The Sixth Sense, which I’ve never seen, but no matter. The reason I wanted to see this one was the presence in the film of Samuel L. Jackson, who always turns in a riveting performance, no matter how good or how bad the rest of the film is.
And Unbreakable is no exception to that statement, if not a rule. Whenever he’s on the screen, as the tormented victim of a brittle bone disease, all eyes are on him, an angry black man (with reason) teetering on a cane that looks as though it will barely hold him. As a lover of comic books and comic books heroes — and an early flashback shows why that is so; how the love of comic books got him through his childhood — he knows that there has to be someone on the other end of the spectrum, perhaps even unknowingly.
And that someone just might be David Dunn (Bruce Willis), an ordinary guy, a stadium security guard by occupation, who just happens to be the only survivor of a horrific train accident. Over a hundred other passengers died; Dunn comes out of it without a scratch.
Dunn, as I say, is an ordinary guy, with a semi-estranged son and a marriage that is definitely on the rocks, but … he’s never been sick in his life, as Elijah Price (Jackson) reminds him. Could he have superpowers and have never have known it until now?
As I say, I’m a fan of Samuel L. Jackson, and I still am, but Unbreakable has convinced me that I hadn’t bother seeing another film directed by M. Night Shyamalan, whose directorial abilities I find to be of the flamboyant “look at me, I’m directing” variety, beginning with the very first scene, with Dunn talking earnestly to a young female reporter on the seat next to him on the doomed train. Their conversation is filmed through the separation between the seats in front of them, both awkward and obvious.
As a storyteller, he is no better — not to my mind anyway, speaking as someone who would like to have scenes mean something, not randomly inserted in a portentous manner, but never followed up on or extremely unlikely to happen in the first place, such as Dunn’s son threatening to shoot him with a gun, to prove that his father does indeed have superpowers.
As for the surprise ending, I left the theater asking myself just what it was that happened. It did and did not make sense at the time, and while I’m a lot more aware of what I had missed, I think my mind stopped working when I realized that a lot of the movie didn’t make a lot of sense, was weird only for weirdness’ sake, and I failed to take in scenes that were important, and I just didn’t realize that here at last was something that was essential and I really shouldn’t have missed it.
The movie is still worth watching, though. It was quite popular at the time it was first released, perhaps as a carryover from The Sixth Sense, with which Unbreakable has some strong similarities. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.
December 7th, 2014 at 10:12 pm
I read a great Film Industry snark from an unnamed fellow director who described M. Night as “a 50% director. Each of his films is only half as good as the previous one.”
December 7th, 2014 at 10:17 pm
Directors generally get better the longer they work, Shyamalan gets steadily worse. THE SIXTH SENSE turned on a single surprise, but it was a stunner powerfully delivered. UNBREAKABLE suffers all the things you mention, and the big revelation, while good, can’t come up to the first film.
I’ve given up on Shyamalan making another good film. He just doesn’t have it in him it would seem.
I don’t quiet feel as positive about all of Jackson’s roles on screen, but he steals this one without trying, and he is seldom dull.
I agree with worth watching though, one of the last by Shyamalan that really is.
December 7th, 2014 at 10:21 pm
It takes a long time for me to post a review of a film I’m disappointed with. I saw this movie several weeks ago now, wrote up this review the very same evening, and I’ve been sitting on it ever since, until now.
I’ve tweaked it some in the meantime, but mostly in terms of punctuation, nothing essential. I’ve re-read it several times, and I haven’t found anything I disagree with.
The problem is that there are some scenes that still stick with me, and any movie that can do that has to be considered a success,
And yet, as much as I’ve thought it over, I’m still disappointed.
December 8th, 2014 at 2:25 am
It is possible that, good as it was, THE SIXTH SENSE was not good for Shyamalan as a director. It relied on a tricksy script and a clever direction. Rather than try something new, he has kept doing movies like that in an attempt to replicate the original success. Bits of UNBREAKABLE work, but I also felt that a more straightforward approach might have suited the movie better.
December 8th, 2014 at 2:38 am
There are elements to UNBREAKABLE that are truly outstanding, but they sort of get buried under some “look what I’m doing” camera work and scenes that fall flat. I actually think Bruce Willis gives a very strong performance in this one, as does Samuel L. Jackson as Lex Luthor, I mean, Mr. Glass
December 8th, 2014 at 6:59 am
What Bradstreet said. Night’s biggest problem was conflating the huge success he had with “The Sixth Sense” with its big “twist” toward the end: yes, it was a surprise, but it was honestly earned and everything in the movie supported it (which is why people went back to see the movie again and again–to look for clues, to see how Night set things up). Subsequent movies relied on the big twist without doing all the world-building and laying all the groundwork that Night did in TSS.
As for him being a 50% director, I’d say he’s more like a uranium director: each of his movie’s has a half-life of the previous one and all the time he’s radioactive.
December 8th, 2014 at 7:49 am
Forget this one. The Jackson movie to see is his co-starring role with Geena Davis in THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT.
December 8th, 2014 at 9:57 am
I’d have to watch both again to be sure, but off the top of my head, my favorite Jackson movie is JACKIE BROWN. But there are many many to choose from.
December 8th, 2014 at 3:23 pm
JACKIE BROWN is a better movie than THE LONG KISS GOODBYE, but Jackson is equally good in both though I think he contributes more to the latter film just because its an action film that might not have worked without him while JB has several great performances in it, any one of which could have carried the film.
UNBREAKABLE is more interesting than really good. The twist works here, but we know there is one coming. TSS was a one time unrepeatable film,like the way Hitchcock could make good films, but not another PSYCHO. Hitchcock, however, had enough sense not to try. Shyamalan seems lost trying.
Deb, like the radiation metaphor, though by now his films aren’t radiating much heat of any kind. AVATAR, THE LAST AIRBENDER failed the Harry Cohen test — my butt fell asleep in the seat.
December 8th, 2014 at 4:09 pm
The comparisons with Hitchcock are interesting. PSYCHO came towards the end of a distinguished career, and was really an attempt to see just how many rules he could break and still keep the audience with him (in fact he was able to break just about all of the rules). With Night, it’s as if he made PSYCHO at the beginning of his career, and kept trying to recapture that Bates magic by trying to make all of his films like that. Hitchcock stuck with the thriller because it allowed him to play with the ideas that interested him, such as guilt and innocence, and the idea of an innocent man who must prove his innocence, but his ouevre is extraorinarily varied. REAR WINDOW, THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, VERTIGO, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, NOTORIOUS, FRENZY, and NORTH BY NORTHWEST all have things in common, but they all have their own special style and structure. But that’s what distinguishes a genius from a talented journeyman.
THE LAST AIRBENDER had its own particular problems in the UK. The Airbenders are described as ‘Benders by various characters in the film. Unfortunately ‘bender’ has a particular slang meaning over here that no-one picked up on in the US. When I saw it there was a sizeable contingent of teenagers in the cinema, and when dialogue like “Watch out, there’s a bender behind you!” was used, large segments of the audience were falling off their seats laughing at the unintentional double entendres.
December 8th, 2014 at 6:14 pm
If you want to talk about a bad movie, consider M. Night’s AFTER EARTH with Will Smith. Truly a disaster. And Smith, like him or not, does mass market SF pretty well — Independence Day and Men in Black, for example. But AFTER EARTH was just wretched
December 8th, 2014 at 10:04 pm
He started brilliant, but at this rate will be Ed Wood before he finishes.
December 9th, 2014 at 6:53 am
I hate to use an analogy to Orson Welles, so maybe one to Michael Cimino would be more accurate: An astonishing early success followed by a bus-plunge-trajectory flame out.
December 9th, 2014 at 4:36 pm
Deb: or perhaps John Carpenter. Genuine skill on display in his earlier films, but with a corresponding set of weaknesses and flaws that become more apparent as we become more familiar with his output