After
the success of The Sixth Sense, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan
turned to his next project. He started writing Unbreakable for
Bruce Willis. The Sixth Sense was an original and smart
thriller with a huge "twist" at the end and that's exactly
what's expected of Unbreakable. I'm happy to report that Shyamalan
has created another great movie. He shot this movie in continuity, meaning
he shot the movie based on the order of scenes in the script.
Unbreakable
tells the story of David Dunne (Bruce Willis), a security guard, surviving
a train crash without a single scratch. This phenomenon attracts Elijah
Price (Samuel L. Jackson), whose bones break very easily. This disease
makes Price, a private comic book art collector, a very constrained man.
He tries to convince Dunne that they have something in common, but Dunne
keeps distancing himself from him. This makes up for the low point of this
movie.
The chemistry
between Willis and Jackson just isn't quite
"there". It's sad to see two wonderful actors not be able to
create a chemistry, or strong relationship, just because their characters
don't allow them to. However, this doesn't mean that the performances
weren't strong. In fact, the acting was very strong. Bruce Willis is both
excellent and mysterious, just like in The Sixth Sense. Samuel L.
Jackson had to offer his creative wit and smooth presence.
Shyamalan excels in bringing this intriguing story to the screen. His
writing feels smooth and the dialogue is always interesting. His direction
is focused and maintains a stable latter throughout the movie. The point
where he fails is in the pace of the movie. It just takes too long for the
real mystery to set in. In retrospect, the last 20 minutes take you to a
whole new level of exciting mystery.
The
style in which Shyamalan and D.O.P. Eduardo Serra shot Unbreakable
is quite different than the style of The Sixth Sense. Here, he uses
many wide shots - perhaps too generously since several scenes are somewhat
excruciating to watch. For example, Dunne and Price are in a conversation
and we are forced to watch them through a thin metal gate 20 feet away.
However, I can see how the use of these wide shots creates a field of
added mystery, as if someone is watching the characters - a neato style to
consider.
Shyamalan,
as a writer, concentrated so much on Dunne and Price that he seemed to
completely forget about the supporting characters. He should've beefed up
the character of Dunne's wife (Robin Wright Penn) and son (Spencer Treat
Clark) because they felt too flat.
All
in all, Unbreakable, though not as unexpectedly surprising as The
Sixth Sense stands very well on its own. It's not The Sixth Sense
per se, even though some supernatural overtones are present. Unbreakable
nevertheless finds itself to be a well character driven mystery. The only
thing to consider mediocre is the resolution,
which just didn't satisfy me.
Andrew Niccol is a creative genius. From the mind of the
futuristic genetics-driven drama Gattaca and the
voyeuristic reality-show drama Truman Show comes, to no
big surprise, another creative story.
