Movie Review--Unbreakable

"I believe comics are our last link to an ancient way of passing on history."
--Elijah Glass, Unbreakable

"In a comic, you know how you can tell who the arch-villain's going to be?  He's the exact opposite of the hero."
--Elijah Glass, Unbreakable


Given the release of Glass, there has never been a better time for people to revisit M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable or enjoy their first viewing of it.  It is rare to find a superhero story that is not connected with the two giants of the comic industry in some way.  Comic books with the names of Marvel heroes appear in some scenes, yet Unbreakable occurs within a universe of its own that is completely separate from those of Marvel and DC.  It is an intimate, quiet film by comparison to more recent movies within the MCU and DCEU.  Its superhero, David Dunn, initially tries to dismiss his abilities, claiming he is just a normal man.  Whereas many later superhero films are origin stories that focus extensively on how the hero acquires his or her powers (one notable exception is The Incredible Hulk), Unbreakable presents a hero who has always had unnatural abilities but has struggled to identify and accept them.  Like its successors Split and Glass, it is not an action movie, but is rather a film about characterization, and Unbreakable is all the more effective because of its reliance on a strong script and mostly practical effects.


Production Values

There is no grand showdown between David and a supervillain, no major use of CGI, and no superpower as dramatic as flight or shapeshifting to be found in Unbreakable.  David's abilities--incredibly abnormal strength, an immunity to almost all sicknesses, and visions of someone's past triggered by physical contact with them--are all easy to portray without a large budget.  Since the movie focuses on the characters of Bruce Willis' David Dunn and Samuel Jackson's Elijah Glass, the performances, not computer generated visuals, form the core of the film.  Both of the lead actors are practically perfect fits for their roles; Bruce Willis adopts the persona of a confused but extraordinary man just as easily as Samuel Jackson becomes the physically fragile but mentally alert mentor figure.

Robin Wright (who appeared in the recent and excellent superhero movie Wonder Woman) contributes to some great scenes as David's wife Audrey, though she is greatly underutilized.  Her role in the story is small by comparison to the two leads.  Nevertheless, she makes the most of her relatively few lines.  Having seen Glass, watching a younger Spencer Treat Clark play Joseph Dunn, the son of Audrey and David, shows just how skilled of an actor Spencer was even in his earlier days--Shyamalan having Spencer reprise his role in Glass was a great move.  Some of the best scenes develop David's relationship with Audrey and Joseph, including a date where David and Audrey discuss their disintegrating marriage and an experiment where Joseph tests how much weight his father can lift.


Story

Spoilers!

Security guard David Dunn is the sole survivor of an accident involving the derailment of the Eastrail 177 train.  Dealing with existential sadness and a stagnant marriage, David finds a letter on his car that asks him how about whether he has ever been sick.  The letter was placed by an eccentric man named Elijah Glass.  Elijah, the manager of a comic art store called Limited Edition, strongly suspects that David is an unaware superhero whose body is unnaturally strong and whose weakness is water (due to almost drowning as a child).  Initially, David dismisses Elijah's hypothesis, even after Elijah discovers seemingly strong evidence that David possesses the ability to experience visions of someone's past or precognitions of their future: David has a suspicion that a man at a stadium has a specific gun in his clothes, and Elijah follows the man until he sees the exact model and color David expected.

However, David discovers that he can lift approximately 370 pounds, admits to Elijah that he was completely uninjured in a major vehicle accident from his college days despite faking injury, and begins exploring his powers after embracing them.  He uses his visions to identify a murderer who is holding the children of a dead couple hostage, killing the man.  His newfound existential peace is disrupted when Elijah shakes his hand, though, since he experiences a vision showing how Elijah engineered the train accident that he survived, as well as at least two other murderous situations.  He calls the police and Elijah is placed in a psychiatric hospital, where he seemingly resides until the events of Glass.


Intellectual Content

Unbreakable introduces Elijah's comic book-centric worldview, which is developed further in Glass.  Though the movie takes the cultural influence of comic books and superhero stories very seriously in one sense, its themes are somewhat complex: it warns against mistaking superhero tales for exact parallels to human existence as Elijah does while also exemplifying how even an actual superhero might mistake himself (or herself by logical extension) for an ordinary person.  At the same time, Unbreakable (and its sequels) recognizes the empowering nature of fiction, as well as how even superpowers can be far more plausible than some might imagine, and yet still shows how destructive someone could become if they treat fiction as if it is completely analogous to reality.  At the very least, the central characters of the Eastrail 177 trilogy, particularly the villains, have some of the most blatantly unique ideologies that have ever appeared in superhero films.


Conclusion

I love the spectacle and storytelling potential of well-crafted superhero films with a vast budget, like last year's Infinity War.  Many smaller superhero films, though, like The Winter Solder, The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, and Batman Begins are also among the best of the genre.  However, Unbreakable goes beyond even the latter movies in terms of delivering a narrative that is rooted in originality and characterization.  There was no long series of comics featuring David Dunn that preceded the movie.  David Dunn was not a cultural icon with fans who had long awaited a cinematic adaption of the character.  Instead, he was the result of a successful attempt to create a superhero character and story that seem plausible enough to perhaps seem to fit in our world very naturally.  The Eastrail 177 trilogy might be very controversial, thanks to its final entry, but it starts with a very strong offering.


Content:
1. Violence:  David and a murderer briefly fight so intensely that they leave indentations in the walls of a house.
2. Profanity:  There are a few uses of relatively mild profanity.