*Originally written January 18th, 2019*
With Glass releasing this week it seemed like a safe bet to revisit M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable, his subdued superhero drama that is unlike any superhero film we get today. There's no lame humour aimed at 8 year olds, it's not bright and colourful and it doesn't wrap itself up with a boring CGI battle where a city is destroyed.
It's just a refreshing change of pace after becoming frequently disillusioned and bored by most comic-book films these days. In the past year we've had at least 5, with mixed results and I am dangerously bored by them. It might just be my increasing frustration of seeing every single new big release that I mostly have little interest in, but will give a chance anyway. I'd be fine with this is my local cinema actually showed the smaller films I do want to see, but it's a rarity, and it's frustrating.
Anyway, like I said, Unbreakable is just a breath of fresh air in 2019 and it really gets better with every watch, a character piece with vague brushes of comic-book vibes. I've always been one of those people who found The Sixth Sense a tad overrated and was always more impressed by Unbreakable, a film I found pretty boring as a kid, but being in my 20s, it's far more interesting than I'd remembered.
2000's Bruce Willis who actually tries to act is pretty excellent as David Dunn, a security guard who survives a train-crash that leaves every other passenger dead, while catching the attention of Samuel L Jackson's Elijah Price, a comic-book obsessed art gallery owner who spends his life in a wheelchair due to his rare disease that leaves his bones brittle.
As much as I love Unbreakable and I've seen it a few times now, I tend to always forget a lot of what happens. I obviously remember the big reveal at the end that leads to a barbarically abrupt close where I feel an epilogue or another 10 minutes were planned, but maybe they run out of budget?
But the mystery at the core of Unbreakable is still fascinating. Seeing Dunn slowly release he's not normal as he does more and more actions that normal human could not do, and I just love how restrained this all is. It's about the characters journey, not some boring end of the world plot. The closest we get to superhero action is a short scene towards the end where Dunn attempts to stop a home invasion which itself is cold, and surprisingly brutal scene. This feels much more like superheroes in the real world, something that has been done many times before, but never this effective.
I do love Samuel L Jackson's Elijah Price too, a tragic figure who is the polar opposite of Dunn, a man so obsessed with comic books, that he'll do anything in the vein hope that a character like the ones he reads about could be real. It's also just nice to see Jackson in a film where he doesn't get to drop the F bomb and a treat to prove he can give a good performance that actually has gravitas and isn't just fun because "It's Samuel L Jackson"
This was always planned as a trilogy in Shyamalan's head, which we know wouldn't end up happening till 2019 after the clunky reveal that Split was a secret sequel to Unbreakable. As much as the reviews are mixed for Glass, I really am looking forward to it, much more than any of the other Marvel or DC films coming out this year. It might be a mess and not as entertaining as those films, but god, I'm sure it'll at least be more interesting and different.
Unbreakable is a perfect refresher that superhero films can be truly great pieces of art in themselves. They don't need loud, obnoxious set-pieces or cringey jokes, just a grounded story that actually explores its characters rather than having to blow up some giant beam that shoots into the sky.
9/10 Dans
Unbreakable is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
Watch the trailer below:
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