Rating: 
Summary: Odd And Interesting
Review: M. Night Shyamalan followed "The Sixth Sense" with this offbeat film. While this film does not even come close to the brilliance of "Sixth Sense", it does hold it's own by itself. Bruce Willis stars as a family man whose marriage on the rocks. On a trip home on a train, the train is involved in a horrible accident. Everyone on board dies....except Willis. There's not a single scratch on him. He then begins to realize that he's never been sick, or has ever been really hurt. His son thinks he's some kind of superhero. Enter Samuel L. Jackson. He plays a comic book collector with a rare bone disease. His character tries to tell Bruce that he is indeed a superhero. I won't tell you what happens. You'll have to see for yourself. Shyamalan delivers the moddy colors and haunting shots like in "Sixth Sense". They work here as well. Jackson is really good in his role. Willis is really starting to become a 'real' actor. Everybody always thought he was some dimbulb action star. How wrong those people are. He is solid here. This movie is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. You'll either love it or absolutely hate it. You just have to remember one thing : It's just a movie.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Follow-Up a Flat, Unfinished Work
Review: My first impression of this movie is how incredibly well Night Shyamalan can create a scene through lighting, sound and angles. This worked incredibly well in the acclaimed "The Sixth Sense" and worked well with Bruce Willis' bland, subdued delivery. It would be safe to say that most of us approached "Unbreakable" with the same expectations of surreal twists and unexpected revelations under soft light and flash-cuts. During the first ten minutes, you know this is the same guy who creeped you out in "Sixth" and you cannot help but anticipate the same kind of ride. It works...to a point. This movie is the first act of a triology on the subject where one man discovers he has superheroic abilities, but not in the cheesy, spandex-clad tradition of film and comic books. It puts the characters into a very real context and painstakingly manufactures our belief in the characters. If you take this movie as a one-shot knock off, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed, but if you accept this is only the beginning and follow the story as an "origin" of a hero or transformation of a character, you will understand it, but I you may - as I did - feel created that there wasn't more to the ride. It is a self-contained story about "rebirth". This, however, is not enough for a good movie in my opinion. Here's why... The screen is gorgeous. But what goes on is tedious. Willis mugs and grimaces with little animation, while Robin Wright Penn serves as the flat cardboard wife with little to contribute but another complication to the main character's life. Their child is creepy, weepy and somewhat distracting in his role (clearly meant for Haley Joel Osmet since the replacement looks a lot like the current star of A.I.) Samuel L. Jackson gets to preach again - something we've seen in every good role he's had from Pulp Fiction to Star Wars. And while his character is one of genius, he is little more than Yoda in the Star Wars movies, a facilitating expository character who we are forced to believe is more important than he is. He is, to extend the Star Wars metaphor, a Darth Maul...a very cool character misused and too easily dismissed from the story. So we have characters swimming on a beautifully shot canvas, whispering to one another and performing scenes that are sometime interesting, often dull, enevitably predictable. The DVD itself contains some deleted scenes that are also gorgeous, and sadly more thought-provoking than the scenes left in. The documentaries included will thrill comic book readers who dig that sort of conversation and gives audiences an appeal to understand the film better if they watch a second time. We're also treated to a short scene from Shyamalan's childhood filmmaking days on Disk 2 to remind us how far he's come since VHS home movies.
Rating: 
Summary: Hilariously overrated
Review: I have to laugh when I read reviews,such as one below,about how this movie is 'misunderstood' now,but will be seen as a masterpiece in ten years.In ten years,this movie will be completely forgotten.
This is more of Shyamalan's ponderous filmmaking,unbearably tedious,complete with lousy script and sleepwalking actors.Watching movies such as 'Unbreakable' almost makes one forget how magical movies can be.People who think they like this sort of glacial dreck should try watching some of Hitchcock's or Kurosawa's films.
Shyamalan is the perfect director for today's hollywood--all hype,zero substance.
Rating: 
Summary: ENIGMATIC AND GRIPPING
Review: I would have to admit that this well-crafed thriller had me captivated for about 95% of its length. Anyone who doubts Shyamalan's pizzazz as a topdollar director only needs to witness the camerawork in the second scene where Bruce Willis begins his baleful journey in Amtrak.
The plot is fascinating, particularly to comic book buffs; it's not kid's play to make the numinous world of paper heroes and villains so utterly credible that I nearly found myself rooting for a superstar myself.
But after pregnating its context with such orgasmic crescendo, Unbreakable defies its name and goes *poof* in the last five minutes. It all ends too soon, too predictably. A raging retard could see it coming a mile away.
In hindsight, thick on ambience, thin on plot. Certainly a worthy rental for film or comicbook buffs, but it's heartbreaking to watch how close this was to being an epic.
Rating:
Summary: Good, But Overly Subtle At Times
Review: Unbreakable is the story of two men leading parallel lives. One grows up revered as a star athlete, while the other has to deal with the hardships of a severe physical handicap. In the movie, they both recognize they are unique in more ways than they had previously known, and their backgrounds make them react in different ways to confrontations with evil in the world around them. Like all Shyamalan movies, Unbreakable has a twist, but here the twist is based more on psychology than on mystery and suspense. This is a good movie, but I don't think it is one of Shyamalan's best. However, I have noticed that people who are very interested in child psychology and its ramifications often consider Unbreakable profound and underrated.
The rest of this review is about special features on the DVD, especially the deleted scenes. I do not give away the plot, but you may want to stop reading if you have not seen the movie and you wish to be absolutely surprised by everything in it.
If at least three of the scenes were left in, I feel the movie would have been deeper and made more sense. I really like all of Shyamalan's movies, but I think he was suffering from sophomore syndrome when he made Unbreakable. I get the impression he was unsure of himself, so he cut too much.
Ever since I saw this movie in the theater, I have been kind of wondering in the back of my mind how much Bruce Willis' character David could really bench press. Long before I knew about the deletions, it was obvious that the scene of David working out in the garage was missing something. Yes, doing 350 for two reps is impressive; but lots of people can do it. Granted, they're all a lot bigger than Bruce Willis, but there are a couple of them in every gym. One of the deleted scenes shows David performing a feat of strength that doesn't just impress his own son, but is also validated by the amazed reaction of many strong men. The scene had a lot of emotion and drama, and it did not belong on the cutting room floor. It seems that Shyamalan, in his second movie, was trying too hard to be subtle. As a result, there is no clear moment of revelation in the movie to mark David learning how extraordinary his gift really is.
Another deleted scene shows Samuel L. Jackson's character suffering terribly due to his illness as a child and being ignored by mobs of uncaring people. Without this scene, the character's callousness does not quite make sense.
A less important scene that I still felt belonged was one in which a priest tells Willis' character not to feel too special about being "chosen." The scene would make the movie slow down a little, but it eloquently addresses what I have always considered an annoyingly shallow type of piety.
Hey, Night... Director's Cut?... Pretty please?
Rating:
Summary: Love the director, hated the ending
Review: This is my least favorite of M. Night's movies. Don't get me wrong, the ending is a classic M. Night plot twist, it just really bummed me out. It DID tie everything together and it was certainly a very plausible ending, but it left me with a really bad taste in my mouth. If you like M. Night, you really need to see it to see his complete range of work. However, I think many people will dislike it because it ends on such a sour note.
Rating: 
Summary: Underated
Review: This is the one of the most underated films ever. It is right below the most underated film on my list, Road to Perdition. While these two movies are totally different, they are the same in one aspect. Amazingly directed, acted, and just plain awesome. The ending of this film is classic. It did not blow me away but it did give me chills on how it was presented and what was said. The best comic book movie ever, that was not even based on a comic. I wonder what it would have been like if it came out now during all the comic book movies?
Rating:
Summary: Shyamalan's best!
Review: As a comic book fan and a huge Shyamalanite, I would have to rate this a notch above The Sixth Sense. The pace is just right, the plot deeply engrossing, the camera work is excellent, above all the brilliant background score by James Newton Howard brings out the awe-struck feeling Shyamalan would have wanted to exact from his audience.
If you've grown up devouring superhero comics, then you'll agree this is the best comic book movie ever. This can be viewed as the prologue of a super-hero's life, the part where he realises the powers he's been endowed with, and that's what makes it so interesting.
Criticism is rife on the "unrealistic" nature of the story and the mathematically remote possibility of the events that transpire, but then it's not supposed to be an ordinary story. Witnessing the extraordinary events happening to a seemingly ordinary person is what makes the whole experience so overwhelming.
Rating:
Summary: * WEIRD AND STRANGE *
Review: I think it is worth renting just to say you saw it ... but that's it. Not worth buying.
Rating:
Summary: Man of Steel. Man of Glass.
Review: Life is not a comic book, and Superman doesn't exist.
There are no caped crusaders, no black-cloaked night-defying vigilantes serving as unseen sentinels of Truth, Order, and Justice, watching over the harried commuter as the literal incarnation of the better angels of our Nature. The City out there has teeth and claws: you're going to get in trouble, and when you do, no one is going to come to your rescue.
You see that weaselly, wizened, bespectacled clerk across the aisle from us on the train? That's the one, you got him pegged---looks like Clark Kent, doesn't he? Now, when that wild-eyed guy three rows down from him opens up his trenchcoat to reveal an AK-47 and makes the 6PM rush-hour express his personal butcher-shop, Clark Kent is going to stay just that---weaselly, bespectacled Clark Kent. No phone booth transformation for him, no salvation for you and me and our fellow passengers. Nope, he's going to scream, and try to run, and die Clark Kent, along with you and me.
In our world, men and women die meanginglessly every day: in traffic pile-ups, in air disasters, pushed on the subway tracks by anonymous madmen, who later disappear in the crowd. There is no Superman; there never was, there never will be. Or will there? M. Night Shyamalan leads us right down that particular rabbit hole in the eerily profound and deeply moving "Unbreakable", his meditation about the meaning of a superhero in a callow age.
Case in point: Security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is riding home on the train from a Manhattan job interview (he didn't get an offer---see?---real life). He checks out his seatmate; yeah he's married---but it's a bad marriage, dying a day at a time---and she's lithe, tall, slender, good facial structure. She stows her carry-on in the overhead bin, and as she does her shirt rides up, revealing a black rose tattoo. Nice.
They make small-talk; she's a sports-agent on her way to meet with a rising young football star; in the football spirit, David Dunn makes a pass---and fumbles. She gets creeped out and takes a seat a few rows down. A minute later the train shakes, there's a high keening noise, another furious bump---the bad kind, the Something is Very Wrong kind---and the train derails.
Everyone aboard dies. Everyone except David Dunn, who walks away from the steaming, smoldering carnage without a scratch.
Shellshocked, baffled, confused, he attends the church service for the dead; staggering outside, he finds a glossy invitation---with a cryptic phrase---to a Philadelphia art gallery affixed to his windshield.
That leads him to reclusive art dealer Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson, who along with Willis carries this movie with poise and presence), taunted as "Mr. Glass" by his erstwhile classmates, sufferer of a rare bone disease called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (a real disease): the slightest stress can snap his bones to splinters.
In turn, we meet Elijah's true life's work: reasoning that if a man of Glass could exist the Bell Curve of human genetics would also feature a Man of Steel, he has spent years sifting through horrific accidents for survivors--and more importantly, for that one man in a million who could be a Superhero.
Just as with ghosts and werewolves and vampires, you can deal every day with arguments against---but it only takes one true positive to change the world. And in David Dunn, Elijah feels he has found his Positive.
Dunn isn't having any of it: besides, he has tons of evidence why he's not a comic book hero: he's just a GUY---dead-end job, marriage on the rocks, and he's not invulnerable---hell, as a rising young college football star, he was injured in a nasty car accident---with his then girlfriend and now wife Audrey (Robin Wright Penn)---that injured his legs and ended his football career.
The superficial have called Shyamalan a great many things: a spooky director, a horror director, a 'twist' director---but in fact, M. Night has really always been interested in probing the Human Soul, and has tilted at a wide range of genres---Alien invasion, Ghosts, Monsters in the Woods, Superheroes---to dig into the human condition. What makes us tick. What distinguishes us from the animals. Our Gods, our night terrors, our inspirations. Knowledge---of reality, of self, of destiny---comes at a price. And as this strangely sedate, moody piece winds its way to culmination, we find that Dunn's price is extraordinary frightening---and severe.
Shyamalan serves "Unbreakable" up as a warped riff on the superhero origin story: the initial reluctance and bewilderment on the part of the crime-fighter, the secret identity, the strange ellipitical orbit of superhero and supervillain. His directing here is restrained and reticent, and this restraint is given fuller effect by cinematographer Eduaro Serra, who casts everything through a blue filter than enhances the moodiness, uncertainty, and depression.
Finally, M. Night proves again that he's an actor's director: this moodpiece is brought off nicely by essentially four actors: Willis playing it with brooding---but hopeful---understatement as David Dunn; Jackson serving as perfect sounding board, foil, and fencing master for the reluctant hero Dunn; and Robin Wright Penn (Audrey) and Spencer Treat Clark bringing up the rear as the dubious wife and adoring son.
Not a flashy, gangbusting epic like Spider-Man, "Unbreakable" is no less a moody, thoughtful treatment of the Origin Story---no less so because Shyamalan is wrestling with the hero within all of us. Prepare to be have your emotions broken---prepare to be shaken.
JSG
|
