Elijah (Samuel L. Jackson) barely survives being born with a rare disease that leaves his bones extremely brittle. He grows into a dealer of comic book art driven by need to find his polar opposite, an invulnerable individual, and is attracted to David Dunn (Bruce Willis), the sole survivor of a train wreck. His attempts to persuade Dunn of his "powers", Dunn's initial refusal then, encouraged by his needy son Joseph (Spencer Treat Holmes), apparent acceptance of them, forms the spine of a picture that is part domestic drama (Dunn and his wife Audrey (Robin Wright Penn) are on the verge of separation as the film opens), part parable (about the heroism in all of us) and, I suppose, part comic book.
I say 'I suppose' because this is the strand of the film that director/writer/producer Shyamalan seems least comfortable with. For a movie about comic books, Unbreakable doesn't feel much like a comic book movie, as muted in mood as in palette (lots of wintry, almost industrial, blues and greys). Until about three-quarters in, the notion that Dunn is actually blessed with superhuman powers is treated with, at the very least, scepticism. Dunn's increasing self-belief is motivated by his need to measure up to his young son's quiet adulation of him, which itself is stimulated by the boy's fear of losing one or other of his parents. Indeed it is the domestic tensions that Shyamalan handles best, with the burly Willis both physically and psychologically repressed by what is, on one level, the mother of all mid-life crises. There is one terrific scene in the Dunn kitchen where the desperate Joseph tries to prove his growing certainty in his father's apparent invulnerability by threatening to shoot him, the scene ending with the three family members slumped exhausted against the three kitchen walls framing the screen.
This sort of visual symmetry is a favourite Shyamalan device, and is at least preferable to his other habit of filming scenes from unusual angles or distances. Far too many scenes are shot upside down, others rotate 360 degrees, in others the camera is positioned high above the actors for no good reason. One early scene takes place entirely in reflection on a television screen, another appears to have been shot with the camera attached to Willis' elbow as he carries Wright Penn up the stairs. This fidgety style seems designed to distract the audience's attention from the fact that Unbreakable is pretty much a chamber piece, and not perhaps what they were expecting from a picture with such high-wattage casting.
But it is this very fact that recommends the film. This is as thoughtful a mainstream picture to come of Hollywood in a good while and - stop me if this starts to sound ridiculous - Willis is developing as a credible, understated performer of some presence. Consider his recent career against that of his fellow conspirators in global convenience catering, Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose latest pictures have misfired badly, and a picture emerges of an actor comfortable within his limited range who chooses his material with some taste.
If Unbreakable is ultimately a slight step backward for Shyamalan from The Sixth Sense (1999), the blame does not lie with Willis. Rather, it has the whiff of a half-finished script dusted off in the aftermath of that film's unpredictable success - it is now one of the top ten money-makers of all time - and finished in a rush to capitalise on the earlier triumph. The merits of the respective 'shock' endings of the two films are instructive. In The Sixth Sense, it was the icing on the cake, a pleasing twist at the end of what was, even without it, a satisfyingly spooky yarn with a rigorous internal logic. In Unbreakable, the 'surprise' ending - heavily trailed throughout - feels like a gimmick, an attempt at giving substance to the supposed crowd-pleasing supernatural element that actually undermines all that is best about the film.
Reviewed by John Atkinson
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