Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Okay. Many of you have been writing me to say that you're glad I'm wrong and that UNBREAKABLE is going to be genius. Let's set the record straight. I never said this movie was going to be terrible. I said it was a disappointment considering how long I've been a fan of Shyamalan. Unlike most of you, I've been following this guy's career for about three years now, since my first exposure to his writing. I have utmost respect for his abilities as a writer, and I thought SIXTH SENSE was a wonderful step up as a director. By the way... I want to correct something DS says below, a common misconception. This isn't M. Night's second film. It's his fourth. PRAYING WITH ANGER and WIDE AWAKE both came before THE SIXTH SENSE. You just didn't see them. When Darth Siskel called me to say he'd seen the new film, I quizzed him at length about it, and there's still major issues I have with this film narratively. Will it look great? Will the performances be top-notch? Perhaps. Will this excuse the film's gaping narrative flaws? Well, it seems to have done so for many viewers so far, DarthSiskel among them, so maybe no one else cares about scripts adding up to something or characters having some sort of internal consistency or purpose. And watch out for that ending... it seems to have played havoc with DarthSiskel's evening. Here he is to tell you all about it in a review that's free of any major spoilage...
"UNBREAKABLE: THE BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR, WITH THE WORST ENDING OF THE YEAR" By Darth Siskel
Truebelievers,
Tonight I got to see UNBREAKABLE! It was THE movie I wanted to see more than any other this fall. I'm a fan of the Sixth Sense, but I went into that one knowing the big surprise, so I don't LOVE it. I probably would have loved it if I hadn't figured out the surprise from the commercials. Unbreakable is a different story. There's a big surprise, but I doubt many will guess it.
Unbreakable is a great second film for M. Night Shamalamadingdong. It's only simularity to the Sixth Sense is the dark, serious tone in which it plays out. A consistant tone kept up throughout it's 2 hours and change running time, UNTIL the last 30 seconds, when the movie suddenly turns RETARDED, followed by the credits rolling. More on that in a second.
* slight spoiler alert*
Unbreakable is a story about a real world comic book hero. Bruce Willis is a special man who has extraordinary powers, and with the help of another special person, Sam Jackson, he figures out why and how to use these powers. There is no flying in this movie, no heat vision, nobody punches asteroids away from earth, and there are no battles with giant robots. The powers aren't over the top, and are explained realistically. Willis was simply born different than most people. He can press alot more weight than the average person, never gets sick, and has never been injured, not even in the huge train wreck that killed about 170 people. Not a cut, bruise, or scratch. You could say he's a mutant, and one of his other gifts is a psychic ability to see evil things that people do.
I was completely drawn into this movie from start to finish. I was loving it. A huge comicbook fan myself, I really loved the idea of bringing a superhero down to earth so much that I could believe it was possible... that maybe we could have a Superman of our own. Superhero films have ranged from great fantasy to flashy campy crapfest fantasy, but Unbreakable never goes there. I don't look at it as a fantasy at all. It's about a superhero with super powers, but I was convinced it was real!!
My disapointment didn't come till the last minute...maybe 30 seconds. The whole movie is a buildup to Willis finally accepting his place in the world, realizing how he should use his gifts, and when we finally get there, the movie hits us with a big shocker surprise, which I LOVED, but then, it suddenly becomes fantasy. The movie doesn't outright explain everything, leaving alot to think about, but the whole tone of the movie changed suddenly, not because of the surprise, but how they wrap it up after the surprise. Rather than showing the exploits of Willis, now a full hero, we get a freeze frame on him and Jackson, with a title card explaining what happens to them. It was like Roger Rabbit suddenly popped in on the last minute of Silence of the Lambs and farted.
I think M Night was trying to give us a 'comic book' ending. I, and many in the New York audience I saw it with thought it was just a STUPID ending. It was sloppy, unsatisfying & anticlimactic. If the movie had cut away after the big surprise, and actually showed what the title cards had said, it would've been so much better.
I still really LOVE THIS MOVIE, but remain perplexed about the intentions of the ending. I really can't wait till it comes out so I can talk heavy about it...especially with comic book fans.
