Not even home-town pride could save this film.

Rating: 3/10 (26 November 2000)

Unbreakable starts out slow, moody, and Sixth Sense-like but steadily grows more unbearable as it progresses. First off, Shyamalan consistently shoots through glass doors or reflects his actors in mirrors (that is, objects that are NOT unbreakable). Likewise, he seems intent on presenting each scene from an odd perspective (from straight above, slightly below sight-line, or rotating around and around). Not only does all this fancy camerawork fail to bring any added depth, meaning, or artistry to the film, but it actually proves annoyingly distracting. The plot trajectory, like the camera-work, also fails to support its meaning. While fans of The Sixth Sense will come expecting the story to unfold slowly, the problem with Unbreakable is not one of pacing so much as structure. Unbreakable is, fundamentally, a film with the content of a thriller but the structure of a romance. In the hands of a more mature director, such as Neil Jordan, shifts in genre actually work to propel and complicate a film (for example, The End of the Affair). In this case, viewers will undoubtedly leave feeling cheated by a film that drops the ball on its own setup.