Willis and Shyamalan: An Unbreakable Duo

Rating: 10/10 (3 March 2001)

It's a very difficult thing, trying to be original in Hollywood. Everything has been done and re-done. If you do think of something new, it probably isn't good because... if it was, someone would have done it already. And producers, they like more of the same; they like to be able to predict bottom lines. All these thigns are going against M. Night Shyamalan, Unbreakable's writer-director, but amazingly, he has followed his wholly original The Sixth Sense with another mind boggling supernatural realist movie.. And it's fantastic. He pairs up again with Bruce Willis, and I think that the two have forged one of those old fashioned Hollywood relationships. I hope so, because they work perfectly together. Willis has taken form in Hollywood as an everyman, the kind of actor I suspect Alfred Hitchcock would have cast in his films were he alive and working today.
Willis plays an ordinary man in Unbreakable, who has to face the possibility that he is extraordinary. (very mild spoilers ahead) After being the sole survivor of a train wreck, Willis is approached by a comic book shop owner (Samuel L. Jackson) who has an incredible theory: What if Willis is unbreakable, an indestructible force not unlike Superman, Spiderman and the other inhabitants of Jackson's comic book world. Sounds silly, doesn't it? Watch Shyamalan make you believe in it. Everything is unpolished, and that's the magic technique. It's grainy, it's 100% real, and then it's a superhero movie. Shyamalan's characters are most important, more than anything else. Unbreakable would have been a good movie without the train wreck and the superpowers. It's well acted and heartfelt. Bringing in the supernatural seems so right, though, and if I knew how Shyamalan did that, then I would be writing a script right now instead of a review. His is one of the most fertile minds in Hollywood history, and I urge anyone to see what this craftsman has crafted. Be amazed.