Movie Reviews for Unbreakable [Blu-ray]

Unbreakable [Blu-ray]

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Movie Reviews of Unbreakable [Blu-ray]

Movie Review: Unbeatable!
Summary: 5 Stars

Although Shyamalan's "Sixth Sense" perhaps had more chills and more of a classic twist-ending - I personally think "Unbreakable" is his best film. I'm not sure if you would call it's ending a "twist," but it made me gasp when it suddenly brought a whole landscape of emotion into focus with an amazing depth of field.

Furthermore, this movie has one of the most interesting characters I've ever seen on screen. Samuel L. Jackson plays a precise and learned art dealer with a special affinity for original classic comic book drawings. His genetic affliction limits the physical activity he can engage in, but his imagination has always been free to entertain strange possibilities. This truly is an original portrayal that could never typecast Jackson. His role is not as romantic lead, not as supporting character actor, not as doctor, lawyer, merchant... It's what he is that in the end creates the shock of brilliant resolution.

This is a movie whose intricacies will haunt you long after the fact. And even if you never had any interest in comic books, you will probably walk away from `Unbreakable" with a new respect for what Joseph Campbell might call their "power of myth."

One word about the availability of this film - I see a lot of the single-disc versions of it are available only in "Region 2" DVD format. You would need a "Multi-Region" or "Universal" DVD player to play these versions. As I understand it, all DVD players are manufactured with the capability of playing all DVDs. However, the players are then set by distributors to play in only one region, most often the US/Canada Region 1 - in order to block overseas bootlegging versions and other illicit overseas offerings.
There are on-line sites presumably listing decoding sequences that will allow you to "unlock" your specific DVD player so it will play all regions. However most people I've talked with have found these decoding sequences don't work. This can be frustrating because it seems an increasing number of English or foreign movies and comedy series are being offered only in non-Region 1 formats lately.
So if you want to buy one of the single-disc Region 2 versions of "Unbreakable" listed on this website, you might need to consider buying a "Multi-Region" DVD player on-line, or else you might want to go to an ethnic neighborhood (such as an East Indian community) in a large city to find a Multi-Region player.

Movie Review: For Real Comic Book Fans
Summary: 4 Stars

Unbreakable is about the mythology behind comic book superheroes and the purposes that each of us have in life. The film opens with the birth of a baby boy with all four of his limbs broken. He is Elijah Price, who is played by Samuel L. Jackson, and he has type I OI or brittle bone disease. As his life goes on, he gets the nickname of "Mr. Glass" as up the point of present time in Unbreakable, Elijah had broken bones in his body 57 times. Elijah is motivated early on to socialize in some capacity by his mother and his primary interest becomes comic books. As he gets older he soon begins to question what the reason is for his own existence and comes to the conclusion that if people like him exist with his weakness, then surely there must be someone on the other end of the spectrum with massive strengths. Elijah believes there is nothing scarier than to live life without knowing your purpose and he makes the assertion that there are in fact real-life superheroes.

Bruce Willis plays David Dunn, a security officer, who, unlike Elijah, is trying to find his own purpose in life. He gave up his football career for his wife but now his marriage is falling apart. David survives a train wreck that kills 131 people, and he is the only survivor. He was completely unharmed. Elijah believes David to be a real superhero and gradually confronts David with his theory. David's son Joseph believes Elijah and assists David in finding out more about his potential powers. Just to add, I'm of the opinion that it is an absolute pleasure to watch Willis and Jackson act in pretty much anything.

As with any M. Night Shyamalan film, giving too much away is hugely detrimental to the experience and please know that this film is entirely worth going into with no more information then I have already provided. What Shyamalan has done here in retrospect, while considering the recent onslaught of big-budget comic book movies, is create a completely unconventional yet convincing adaptation of comic book heroes' origins. At the same time Unbreakable celebrates the mythology behind these fictional characters. It takes a profound imagination to come up with a screenplay that gives this concept the treatment that Shyamalan has. It is the kind of concept that might have taken almost a lifetime of brainstorming.

A friend of mine once said that the Sixth Sense was a gigantic and nearly perfect movie for absolutely everyone, while as a comic book fan Unbreakable was tailored made perfectly for him. Though I'm half the comic book fan he is, I concur with that assessment enough to confidently invoke it hear. If you truly love comic books, Unbreakable is your film. If you are not a lover of comic books, then try to walk into this film expecting little action and you shouldn't be disappointed.

It can be argued that Shyamalan has lost his way in recent years, although he does retain his technical prowess even now. Nevertheless, Unbreakable is still a joy to watch and is a shining example of Shyamalan during his most inspired and generative phase.

Movie Review: review
Summary: 4 Stars

I'll admit: I've only seen a couple of Shyamalan's other movies, but I didn't like them. I'll admit: I like comic books.

I'll try to keep objective to this movie [as opposed to ranting about Shyamalan's other movies].

The first time I saw Unbreakable, the overall movie generally seemed slow and anticlimactic. However, after a few years I had the urge to see it again, and the second time through was much more enjoyable. The movie starts right off into the main plotpoint: the protagonist is on a train, it crashes, and somehow he walks out of a hospital bed unharmed. The use of color-themes throughout the movie are very alike to comic books. And as the story progresses, this becomes very obvious. As the movie starts, most of the colors are undersaturated and almost dull. But when the story picks up, different colors just jump out. This is a great style of bringing the viewer's attention to something (something comic books uses often).

The overall tone of the characters is set to show: these aren't supposed to be in your face action-packed characters from movies like X-Men or Batman or the like. These characters are supposed to feel like everyday characters. They're not supposed to shine above anyone else. They're supposed to be experiencing everyday life stuff: marital problems, a father trying to bond with his son. The only difference is that something extraordinary has been suddenly discovered by someone who is ordinary: the main character is an everyday man who finds out he can't be harmed. I'll be honest: the movie isn't highly-dramatic. But it's probably a realistic way of showing how an everyday guy is trying to come to terms with something not-so-everyday.

I found the individual characters very well-developed in the respect that they are meant to represent everyday people with an unusual situation thrust upon them. It's not as if real-life-dad and real-life-mom are going to react to this situation by saying, "Hey, maybe you should make a costume out of bright spandex or colorful leather and fight crime with a lot of publicity!" The hero is a husband and father trying to deal with a troubled marriage and a son affected by that troubled marriage. His wife is a wife and mother, trying to keep moving through her life despite the hard marriage. The son is a kid; what do kids do? Over-react. He tries all he can to make sure his parents are happy while at the same time trying to prove his dad is a superhero. It might come off as annoying, but I'm sure anyone can agree kids who over-react are annoying.

If you have the attention span of a five-year-old, where everything has to be fast-paced, in-your-face, bad-guys-flying-in-from-everywhere action, you probably won't enjoy this movie. It's not glitz or explosions or fancy-costumes.

But rating on an objective level: the cinematography is interesting. It tries to keep from being generic Here's the guy talking, Switch to other guy talking, Switch back to other guy talking. The way the contrast and colors are depicted is thoughtful and not overly generic like so many movies. Someones you have to admit it's a nice to not be stuck with generic camera angles and generic color/contrast presentation. The acting is highly skilled. The only actor I would have a problem with would be the kid, but that can slide considering he's still young and not as experienced as his older counterparts. The plot, while it is definitely quiet and has a not-lightning-speed pace, is still something the viewer can get into (again, assuming they don't have the attention span of a five year old). A little bit of high-paced action might have been okay to bring it a wider audience, but to do so would downplay the "normality" of the characters' lives.

Movie Review: A better title would have been Shyamalan: Unbearable
Summary: 2 Stars

Ah yes, here we have another example of the "genius" of M. Night Shyamalan, the writer/director with the uncanny ability to take a silly, fantastical story and transform it into a film that is - well, silly and fantastical. And patronizing, as well. The Sixth Sense was a great movie, but viewings of Lady in the Water and Unbreakable have me convinced that Shyamalan is the most overrated filmmaker to come along in years. Unbreakable is just a bad movie, pure and simple, but what makes it ever so much agonizingly more unbearable is Shyamalan's "holier than thou" approach to filmmaking. He can't put together a single scene without going all artsy-fartsy on us, as if his films are just too important for anything resembling normal cinematic techniques. He gives us panoramic views of characters for no apparent reason, overdramatizes even the most mundane of scenes by showing the film in ? time (actually, knowing Shyamalan, it's probably something like 0.7893834343 time), and oftentimes foregoes the use of background music in his far too numerous "let's just pause right here for about five minutes" character shots. Thus it is that Unbreakable, a film largely inspired by comic books, is presented as if it's a cinematic masterpiece of life-changing proportions. Well, it isn't.

Here's the down and dirty description of Unbreakable. Bruce Willis plays David Dunn, a seemingly ordinary guy who just so happens to walk away unscathed from a train wreck that killed everyone else on board. Soon thereafter, he is covertly contacted by Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), an avowed comic book collector and dealer in comic "art" who tries to tell him he's some kind of modern-day superhero. Apparently, Elijah, who was born with a defect that made his bones incredibly brittle and easy to break, has spent all of his adult life seeking a real-life comic book superhero. David blows the guy off but soon begins thinking back on his life. The first thing he does is to try and figure out if he has ever been sick or injured. Now you would think any sane person could answer that question himself - if you've ever been really sick, you're going to remember it, and if you've never been sick or injured over the course of multiple decades, you're going to have picked up on that fact at some point long ago. Eventually, Elijah gets under David's skin, which leads us up to the film's final scenes. These crucial moments in the film ought to generate cinematic fireworks, but they don't. I looked for some excitement, and there was just none to be found.

As I've indicated, I thought the storyline was pretty silly (but not as silly as that of Lady in the Water), but an equally serious problem is the lack of any chemistry whatsoever between any of the main characters, especially David and his wife and son. Apparently, I was supposed to care about the fate of their troubled marriage - but I didn't. I didn't even care if David lived or died, to tell you the truth. And his son was just annoying. Now, you do get the vintage Shyamalan twist at the very end, but the effort required to sit through this movie all the way to the end greatly exceeds the payoff of that "surprise." I haven't seen all of Shyamalan's films yet, so maybe there is still some hope for him, but the evidence is definitely mounting that The Sixth Sense was a one-hit wonder for this filmmaker.