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Unbreakable (2000)
 
Review
After the unprecedented success of his
debut, the captivating ghost story
The Sixth Sense, M. Night
Shyamalan once again recruited Bruce Willis for another exploration
of the interface between life and death – and our purpose in life.
Both the budget, stakes, and scope were raised for Unbreakable,
and the film introduces itself like Shyamalan's films often do: with
a lot of promise and enticement. Willis plays a former talented
quarterback and now security guard and family man who miraculously
escapes a catastrophic train accident without a scratch. This
awakens the interest of one Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a
comic book and art collector born with a rare disease that makes his
bones extremely susceptible to fracture. He – and Shyamalan –
propose the idea that the Willis character's seemingly superhuman
abilities may make him into a real-life superhero – a type of being
upon which the pop-culture superheroes are based. It's a fascinating
enough concept, but Shyamalan's sluggish and somewhat predictable
execution diminishes the film's tension and sense of surprise. The
story has a puerile simplicity to it that doesn't justify the slow
build-up and the ultimately obvious comic-book conclusions. The
film's best scenes are the quieter, more intimate ones between
Willis and young Spencer Treat Clark as his son.
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