Unbreakable Reviewed by Christian Pyle Written and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan Starring Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright Penn, and Spencer Treat Clark Grade: C
Last year, writer/director Night Shyamalan rocketed from obscurity to the A-list with "The Sixth Sense," which won both critical and popular acclaim. This year, he hopes that lightning will strike twice by serving up another supernatural drama, "Unbreakable." Bruce Willis is back, and there's a little boy and a twist ending, too. However, the current pic just doesn't work.
You wouldn't know it from the trailers, but "Unbreakable" is a superhero movie. It begins with a set of stats about comic-book collecting. (It turns out that the average collector will devote an entire year of his life to reading comics; I wonder what he wasted the other sixty-nine years on.) Comics come up in the movie in the person of Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), who suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta, a disease that causes him to have brittle bones. Because he's spent most of his life recuperating from injuries, Elijah had a lot of time to read comics. He owns an art gallery devoted to original art by comic-book artists and has an unusual theory: superheroes live and work among us. Elijah figures that if he can have a disease that makes his body easily broken, then there must be others who are unbreakable.
Security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is unbreakable. At the beginning of the movie, David is the sole survivor of a terrible train wreck. Over a hundred people are killed, but David walks away without a scratch. Based on this, Elijah believes that David is the fulfillment of his theory. David has problems of his own; he's breaking up with his wife Megan (Robin Wright Penn) and trying to maintain a relationship with his son Jeremy (Spencer Treat Clark). So, David resists the idea that he's Superman, until he discovers unusual abilities he never knew he had.
Everyone tries very hard to make this movie fly. Shyamalan pervades every scene with the same subtle creepiness that enriched "The Sixth Sense." His direction shows the same meticulous attention to color, and his script endows the fragile premise with as much realism as he can muster. Willis gives his best performance in awhile. While I found him unconvincing as a shrink in "Sixth Sense," Willis shines as dull-witted characters who are out of their depth (as in "12 Monkeys" and "Pulp Fiction"). David is such a character. (When Elijah inquires if David has ever been sick, David has to ask his boss and his wife to find out that he hasn't.) Jackson is slick and charismatic with an undercurrent of menace. Penn is down-to-earth and genuine. Clark is sweet and likeable.
However, despite the admirable efforts of the director and his cast, "Unbreakable" just can't make its plot work. A major part of the problem is the somber attitude with which Shyamalan approaches his subject. Superheroes can be a lot of fun, but a sober tone robs the concept of its joy and wonder. The movie's website includes a lot of information on real-life unbreakable people, so I assume that Shyamalan shares the theory he puts in Elijah's mouth. Willis recently said that "Unbreakable" was the first chapter in a trilogy. Hope the next two have a sense of humor.
Bottom line: Unbreakable performances, brittle premise.
© 2000 Christian L. Pyle
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