UNBREAKABLE (2000)

By: Steve Biodrowski
Date: Wednesday, November 22, 2000

Well, not to keep you in suspense, I'll begin by answering the obvious question: No, Unbreakable is not as good as last year's sleeper success The Sixth Sense. This year's follow-up reteaming of star Bruce Willis and writer-director M. Night Shyamalan sports an intriguing premise and a low-key, convincing approach, but the attempt to make a serious, dead-pan film (out of material normally treated as lightweight fantasy) results in an uneven combination, rather like mixing caviar with cotton candy.

By now, you all know the basic set up, as seen in the film's trailers: David Dunne (Bruce Willis) is the only survivor of a train wreck that kills everyone else on board, and he doesn't have a scratch on him. The obvious question is 'why?' but David is slow to explore possible answers, because he has other problems, which existed before the accident; in fact, the reason he was on the train is that he was coming home from a job interview in another city, where he plans to move, leaving his wife and son behind.

But then, a possible answer presents itself in the form of Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), an art dealer who specializes in rare comic book covers. Elijah suffers from a disease that makes him extremely vulnerable to bone fractures (in school, the kids called him 'Mr. Glass' because he broke so easily), and he has come to wonder long and hard about the possibility that, just as he was born extremely vulnerable, perhaps on the other end of the spectrum there could be a human being who was, in essence, 'unbreakable.' Of course, he thinks David is that person, but David takes some convincing.

This convincing takes most of the rest of the film, which plays out much slower than necessary. Fortunately, this pace does have its benefits, as the story works out in a reasonably realistic fashion instead of pushing forward in a typical Hollywood way. As in Sixth Sense, Shyamalan wants to fuse the fantasy element with an everyday drama about people living (at least apparently) ordinary lives. The effectiveness of his technique as a writer-director is that he goes to great lengths to create a convincing level of believability, and only then does he let the fantasy intrude.

The result is a sort of 'eat-your-cake-and-have-it-too' effect, in which, ideally (as in Sixth Sense) the verisimilitude is never violated even while we are watching the impossible happen. Unfortunately, that isn't quite the case here. As good as parts of this film are, as much as it holds your attention and makes you want to like it, it simply cannot complete its high-wire balancing act in a satisfying way.


Perhaps part of the reason is that the supernatural events of Sixth Sense seem closer to our own real life experiences than what's on display in Unbreakable. Even if you don't believe in ghosts and the afterlife, almost everybody has had the creepy, childhood sensation of being in the dark and thinking that something might be there. Unbreakable, on the other hand, draws its inspiration from an altogether different source, one that doesn't have nearly as profound a resonance. Without this, the film can never fully energize itself; instead, the two polarities at work almost short circuit each other, when a simpler approach might have galvanized it into an action-packed thriller.

Nevertheless, the evidence of enormous talent is so abundantly on display here. Willis and Jackson deliver strong performances that are ably supported by the rest of the cast. The technical credits are all fine. As a writer, Shyamalan continues to prove that he can create interesting characters and situations and infuse them with fantasy elements that make the everyday and the larger-than-life co-exist. As a director, he knows when to use long takes and let the actors do the work, and when to use cutting and fancy camerawork to convey something like David's 'superpower' (an ability to sense when somebody is up to something dangerous).

How, then, does the film manage to be an overall failure while coming so close to success? One reaches for metaphors, and perhaps the best in this case is a house of cards: Imagine an intricate, elaborate, amazing structure that is obviously the work of a master, and then imagine that one last card that is simply one too many, and the whole thing collapsesthe victim of trying too hard to do too much. It's a disappointment to the audience, of course, but still you want to see the next attempt, because you know that, when it comes out right, it will be great.