An un-super superhero.

Rating: 6/10 (21 August 2005)

I gave credit to M. Night for trying to tinker with the comic book movie formula and trying to give some more credence to the sub-genre. Howver, in his attempt to mature the film, he has stripped away most all the things that make people like comics.
After a train wreck, a single man (Bruce Willis) walks away, not only alive but completely unharmed. He is tracked down a mysterious man (Sam Jackson) with a fetish for comics. It seems the mystery man believes he is a superhero, indestructible. How does a man believe the impossible in a world that is so monotonously real?
The film suffers from the outset. What is the most boring part of a superhero movie? The origin; that's the part we all have to put up with before we can finally see the hero doing super things. Most superhero films cover that part of the story in the first half-hour or so and then movie onto the good stuff. Now imagine an entire film of origin, a film that ends just when it should be getting started.
This issue is exacerbated by M. Night's employment of uber dark and dreary settings and locations and the horrendously slow pace of the film.
Story wise the film doesn't fare much better. We all know he is indestructible, we want to watch him act indestructible, but instead we are forced to sit through 2 hours of him trying to figure this out. Which brings up the subject of plot holes; you want me to believe that he has never been sick, had a cut or broken a bone and he has NEVER taken notice of this. He's a middle aged man for god's sake! Oh, but he has noticed that he has some kind of strange ESP that lets him see what people are doing wrong. Curious...
The acting is alright for the most part, but Willis' character is written to be kind of stupid and there is no way to play an slight moron intelligently. Jackson fares better as the creepy comic geek that may have read one issue to many.
I again pass credit for trying to do something different with something familiar, but this just wasn't the right thing to do.
6/10