Unbreakable (2000)
Grade: B
Cast: Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Spencer Treat Clark, Robin Wright
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Rated PG-13 for intense mature elements

M. Night Shyamalan has a gift for creating worlds for his characters that we couldn’t possibly live in. There is no happiness, until the hero with the power realizes it, everyone is happy, and a twist ending shocks the audience. Plus, we get a couple of jump scenes in between.

In his intense new mystery/thriller/comic book saga "Unbreakable," we see a baby being born in the past to a sad mother (Charlayne Woodard) whose bones are all mysteriously broken. After this scene, we cut to the present, but Shyamalan doesn’t lose the eerie tone. David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is on a train headed from New York where he auditioned for a job back to his home in Philadelphia. A brunette hottie sits next to him and reveals to him that she is a sports agent as he gratuitously flirts (but not before taking his wedding ring off). She finally understands where he’s coming from and moves to another seat. Soon we learn that the train has crashed offscreen and Dunn is the only survivor. He then goes home to his broken up marriage with his wife Audrey (Robin Wright), and we soon realize they are probably only still together because of their son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark).

A couple of days later, he gets a note on the windshield of his car that mysteriously asks, “How many days of your life have you been sick?” He tries to figure it out, but can’t think of one time—except for a car accident and a near drowning, but he survived even those. He tracks down the person who left this note and it turns out to be Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), that baby who had the broken bones. He believes that David is a sort of protector of mankind, put here for a reason. David regards him as insane, but Joseph thinks he has a point. Elijah begins what could be described as stalking him, following him and studying his actions. David finds it annoying to have a weirdo follow him around during his job (he’s a security guard). But then Elijah notices David’s remarkable instincts, like knowing a man has a gun with him.

Joseph is soon in awe of the fact that his dad may have superpowers, and his character causes such remarkable scenes as when he holds a gun on David in the kitchen to prove he’s invincible, and when he adds extra weights for his dad to lift, and makes him end up lifting 350 pounds.

Joseph is involved in some of the best scenes, and 13-year-old Spencer Treat Clark does a good job of portraying him, albeit not as expertly as Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense." But then again, he’s much more subtle. Not only do you have the clearly talented Clark, but also three virtuoso performances from Willis, Jackson, and Wright. Willis brings just what the role needs, and we end up caring for David, mainly because he approaches the possibility of his powers with modesty. Jackson is great, even though he’s victim of a bad twist ending (which I’ll get to later). He shows Elijah as a haunted man, and his performance is one that is unfairly being ignored. Then we have the only performance that isn’t being ignored, by Wright. She also brings pain to the role of a woman who wants a marriage back…clearly, all these people are haunted by a demon in some shape or form.

It’s interesting to watch Willis’ character learn to trust his powers very slowly, yet surely. Shyamalan does such a good job of establishing these characters, and he even sets up a string of scares in the last twenty minutes. But then, we get a horrible ending that seems to be tacked on just for the sake of having a twist ending. In my next paragraph, I’m going to discuss the ending, so if you haven’t seen the film, I urge you to skip over it.

In complete honesty, I figured out that Elijah had set the accidents up nearly the moment he came on screen. This is a weak twist. We have come to know Elijah…as strange? Yes. But as a terrorist? Um…no. This guy was called Mr. Glass as a child. The guy who breaks bones all the time. Hardly a “Let’s kill lots of people” kind of guy. Shyamalan gained praise for Bruce Willis’ unknown fate in "The Sixth Sense," so it’s like he set out to make a movie with another twist ending, with the twist being what he built the story around. Well, if that’s true, he did a good job at everything but the twist. It comes as an untimely kick in the mouth, contradicting our senses right when we’re intrigued the most. What he should’ve done is left it open for a sequel and/or prequel to explain everything through the course of a whole movie. But he took the easy way out, telling the fate of the characters in a most unoriginal way.

In an early interview, Willis and Jackson agreed that the film was set as the first in a trilogy, but Shyamalan hadn’t quite committed yet. If this is true, how could Jackson’s Elijah be involved? He’s crippled, and thus for him to break out of an institution for the criminally insane is not only ridiculously implausible but also just plain stupid. Oh well. I guess that’s in the hands of Shyamalan.

But he has other roads to travel. I don’t think he’s the horrible writer people make him out to be, except in parts where he throws an inexcusably crappy plot twist like the one at the end of "Unbreakable."

Put this terrible ending aside, and I think the movie’s great. I guess I can see how one would find it boring—but I didn’t. I was completely involved. I can’t wait for Shyamalan’s next movie (August 2002’s "Signs"), but I hope to God the twist ending isn’t forced. Don’t lie to yourself; it’s becoming a novelty. You know there’s gonna be another twist.


Alex, July 2002