UNBREAKABLE (12)
D: M. Night Shyamalan
Buena Vista/Touchstone/Blinding Edge (M. Night Shyamalan,
Barry Mendel & Sam Mercer)
US 2000
107 mins
Thriller
W: M. Night Shyamalan
DP: Eduardo Serra
Ed: Dylan Tichenor
Mus: James Newton Howard
Bruce Willis (David Dunn), Samuel L. Jackson (Elijah
Price), Robin Wright Penn (Audrey Dunn), Spencer Treat Clark (Joseph Dunn), Charlayne Woodard (Mrs. Price)
***Spoiler Warning***
Arguably M. Night Shyamalan's best follow up to The Sixth
Sense was the one which immediately preceded it.
Unbreakable stars Bruce Willis as a man who is not only
the sole survivor of a devastating train crash, but he managed to survive without a scratch on him.
A passionate comic book collector claims to have the
answers...
This is fundamentally a very brave attempt for
writer-director M. Night Shyamalan to make a superhero movie more appealing to an audience who crave more "serious" work, and for the most part, it works.
It does seem to fall between two stool though, with fans
of the superhero genre not having any clue from the marketing trailer that this is a film for them, while those who aren't fans probably won't understand the references which are given a wink
and a nod.
References to this film were made in the conclusion of the
2017 film Split (qv) before a sequel (Glass) was released in early 2019.
7/10