Movie review: Unbreakable
Not being all that much of a Bruce Willis fan (though he's been in a couple of movies I quite like, such as Fifth Element), I didn't see this when it first came out. Pretty much all I'd heard was "some guy survives a crash and discovers he might be literally unbreakable." A friend suggested that it was about a little more than that and I'd really like it. So Mr. Rhyo and I plunked down on the sofa and ate marionberry rhubarb tart and watched it.
It was... interesting. There were some great camera angles and framings that helped set the tone of the story, but unfortunately it often went past that into completely distracting. If I am paying attention to what the camera is doing and watching the angles, I am not watching the movie, and not connecting with the story and the characters. Which, ultimately, was what was wrong with this movie. His wife is a bitch and a hypocrite, the LAST person on earth he should be sharing his discoveries with is his young son, and there was no point in the movie in which Mr. Glass was anything other than completely creepy and unsympathetic. Bruce Willis went through the entire movie just looking stunned and confused.
Unbreakable also has some very strong moments, however -- through most of the movie you're never really quite sure of the "is he or isn't he?" question. You want him to be unbreakable, to be this superhero-like figure with an enhanced cognition of events, but it's always possible he's not. At the moment you believe when he's standing in the middle of the station, with his arms spread out, "sensing" the evil some of the people around him have done (note to self: according to this movie, evil-doers always were bright colors in crowd scenes - remember not to), you get this feeling of hopelessness - what is he really supposed to do about what he knows these people have done?
It's in the vigilante section of the movie that it descends into predictable rote pattern - do we think he is going to find the bad guy, have a moment of doubt about his abilities and then triumph? Yeah, we were pretty sure of that part, the most sure we'd been about anything that far in the movie, and we were, of course, right. I will say that the ending more than made up for that. Yes, Glass was creepy all along, but that was not what I expected. And pretty much any movie that can throw me that far in predicting the end gets my vote as "overall good," but I still stand by my initial assessment of "Uh...interesting."
It was... interesting. There were some great camera angles and framings that helped set the tone of the story, but unfortunately it often went past that into completely distracting. If I am paying attention to what the camera is doing and watching the angles, I am not watching the movie, and not connecting with the story and the characters. Which, ultimately, was what was wrong with this movie. His wife is a bitch and a hypocrite, the LAST person on earth he should be sharing his discoveries with is his young son, and there was no point in the movie in which Mr. Glass was anything other than completely creepy and unsympathetic. Bruce Willis went through the entire movie just looking stunned and confused.
Unbreakable also has some very strong moments, however -- through most of the movie you're never really quite sure of the "is he or isn't he?" question. You want him to be unbreakable, to be this superhero-like figure with an enhanced cognition of events, but it's always possible he's not. At the moment you believe when he's standing in the middle of the station, with his arms spread out, "sensing" the evil some of the people around him have done (note to self: according to this movie, evil-doers always were bright colors in crowd scenes - remember not to), you get this feeling of hopelessness - what is he really supposed to do about what he knows these people have done?
It's in the vigilante section of the movie that it descends into predictable rote pattern - do we think he is going to find the bad guy, have a moment of doubt about his abilities and then triumph? Yeah, we were pretty sure of that part, the most sure we'd been about anything that far in the movie, and we were, of course, right. I will say that the ending more than made up for that. Yes, Glass was creepy all along, but that was not what I expected. And pretty much any movie that can throw me that far in predicting the end gets my vote as "overall good," but I still stand by my initial assessment of "Uh...interesting."