Shyamalan's streak remains unbroken.

Rating: 9/10 (6 March 2004)

I've noticed that M. Night Shyamalan's movies tend to have a very mournful quality about them, and consistently are peopled with characters who've had a measure of life snatched away from them. His antagonists, and even the secondary characters, all seem to have something missing from their lives that aches at them. I had the pleasure of watching THE SIXTH SENSE for the first time only hours before seeing the director's follow-up UNBREAKABLE when it was first released theatrically. So for me the connection is very immediate and noticeable.
Shyamalan is at his craftiest when he inverts a genre movie, which so far has been his hallmark. THE SIXTH SENSE was a ghost story, and SIGNS was an aliens-take-over-the-world story. By that line of comparison, UNBREAKABLE is a "super-hero" movie...but I think a viewer who gets caught up in such a summary is missing the heart of the film. Comic-books (a medium with a devoted but minimal following) are only the framework within which these characters get to explore very tangible issues.
UNBREAKABLE unfolds at an admittedly liesurely pace, but I for one enjoyed that. It's not a traditional "comic-book" movie, and in my opinion has no need to pace itself like one. Shyamalan has a true storyteller's gift for staging and timing, and is able to make something as mundane as a character descending subway steps seem chilling and perilous. It's that slow burn-storytelling that makes such scenes pay off.
It should also be noted that Shyamalan is great at drawing-out strong performances from children, and Spencer Treat Clark continues that trend in this film. Also, Samuel L. Jackson displays astonishing fragility in his role of Elijah (especially when contrasted with his title character in another film from the same year, SHAFT 2000).
And the soundtrack by James Newton Howard pulses in much the same way as the actual movie does, building to its most notable crescendo during the train station sequence. It's understated and moody, but it resonates with something powerful beneath the surface, exactly like the story itself.
Far more than a "comic-book" movie, and yet very much that. Real life doesn't fit neatly into square panels, and neither does this film...Shyamalan's streak remains unbroken.