Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Here's someone who was moved to write in regarding UNBREAKABLE after seeing the praise some early reviewers are heaping on it. Interesting counterpoint to what we've already heard, and he makes his points well. Here's PENDRAGON, and he's well worth a read...
In light of Darth Siskel's unaccountable rave, I felt I had to send this in. I caught a press screening of UNBREAKABLE this past weekend in Manhattan, based on which I feel I should do everything in my power to stop people from seeing this flick. The movie has a couple high points, but the depths to which it sinks are... well, pretty deep. Here's a review; I'd be honored if you'd post it. Call me PENDRAGON, unless someone else has already grabbed that moniker.
UNBREAKBLE reunites THE SIXTH SENSE's writer/director, M. Night Shamalyan, and star, Bruce Willis, with the city of Philadelphia. Like its blockbuster supernatural predecessor, this new film navigates a foreboding and starkly lit Pennsylvanian environment, highlighted by moody camera angles and slow, atmospheric performances from a capable cast. As in SIXTH SENSE, Willis plays a troubled but supportive father figure to a precocious, nervous boy, and perhaps the little tyke in UNBREAKABLE will be Haley Joel Osmond's successor in the mature-yet-piercingly-cute-child-actor Oscar category. Where SIXTH SENSE mined the border between life and death for its thematic material, UNBREAKABLE focuses on the contrasts between human nature at its weakest and at its most invincible. But where SIXTH SENSE matched morbid material with an appropriately dark tone, UNBREAKABLE flails unevenly, wasting portentious symbolism on a wafer-thin, awkward storyline.
Willis plays a security guard at a stadium in Philadelphia; he is estranged from but apparently still in love with wife Robin Wright Penn. Their troubled child is a continuing concern to the parents. Willis' involvement in a major accident brings issues of his health and strength to the forefront, and a physically weak character played by Samuel L. Jackson presents Willis with a unique and shocking interpretation of Willis' physical condition - Willis may be a comic-book-worthy superhero.
Despite several powerful, crafty scenes involving the son's or Jackson's attempts to spur Willis to heroism, the evolution of Willis' pivotal character is a belabored, redundant and aggravating process. Willis has flashes of intuition - reminiscent of conceits from the Dead Zone, the Shining, and many other paranormal-themed celluloid extravaganzas - which reveal the sins of the people around him, but despite the fact that this talent is never explained and its sudden appearance in his life is never justified, we must endure Willis flashing noisily into the past lives of countless irrelevant characters before he finally, in the last quarter of the movie, decides to act on an intuitive flash (and even then, though the crime being punished is a heinous one, the justice meted out and Willis' technique of delivering it are extremely disappointing.) The audience is continually tempted to root for Willis' character; I was silently pleading with him to metamorphose into a hero as swiftly and decisively as Batman, Superman, or even Spawn do in the their respective cinematic incarnations. But Willis is reluctant and ponderous, and Shamalyan seems unexcited about the very primal human abilities with which Jackson's character is so fascinated. In terms of energy and pacing, this film never emerges from the starting gate, but rather plods along listlessly, hinting at great potential while squandering it with useless dialogue and largely uninspired situations.
The inherent tensions, between sports and therapy, strength and brittleness, father and son, husband and wife, are rich with promise. The smallest roles are perhaps the most watchable and memorable, and demonstrate Shamalyan's deft touch with idiosyncratic aspects of human nature. The babysitter, the son, the young Jackson, Willis' seatmate on the train, even the office secretary at the stadium glow with vital individuality. I wish we could have seen more of each of these characters, and less of the stars. Robin Wright Penn is fine but uninteresting, Bruce Willis is neither better nor worse than in the Sixth Sense, and Jackson does little of note with an unremarkable role. Sparse moments of humor work well.
The dialogue is weak and predictable. Jackson's character is intriguing as a youth but degenerates to cardboard one-dimensionality as an adult. Like in the Sixth Sense there is a surprise ending (it almost feels obligatory, as if Shamalyan is defending his legacy), and as in Sixth Sense the writer/director/producer makes a cameo appearance (look for him in a stadium scene). Despite the intriguing nature of the surprise ending, the final moments of the film and the message they send about the characters is so abrupt and totally bewildering that Unbreakable's ending ranks among the absolute worst and least coherent of all time; even those in the audience who seemed engaged by the rest of this movie were thrown by the conclusion, which inspired nervous giggles and audible complaints. The ending could only be seen as appropriate if the rest of the movie were intentionally farcical, inane, and sophomoric, which, despite other detractions, it is not. The confusing final moments jar horribly with the rest of the film's tone.
The influence of directors David Fincher, Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock on Shamalyan's form is obvious, and some borrowed techniques seem intended as homage to one of these directors (as in an early scene where a camera eavesdrops on a conversation from behind a seat), but at other times, Shamalyan's work stinks of shameless imitation. I hope that the writer/director is punished at the box office and in studio circles for this botched opportunity, and that he learns from his errors. It's embarrassing that a creative talent capable of THE SIXTH SENSE has chosen to follow up that work with such an utter waste of resources and time.
