I expected it to be better!

Rating: 7/10 (24 January 2005)

With all the hype to this movie, I thought it was going to be a top-notch thriller. Instead I found a slow-paced movie that I kept waiting for something occur. Bruce Willis gives one of his sleepiest performances as a security guard, who has unbreakable bones and seems to be able to sense bad people.
Samuel L. Jackson is the opposite in that he was born with incredibly weak bones and goes through life constantly in and out of hospitals with fractures. His one solace in life is comic books. Jackson is obsessed with finding his opposite and he does this by looking for survivors of disasters. He seeks out Willis, who is the sole survivor of a train wreck. We later find out that Willis has never been sick and he may have survived some other disasters as well.
You keep expecting Jackson to ask Willis for a bone marrow transplant or some other type operation to strengthen his bones but Jackson's motives are inspired by the comic books that hold his fascination.
The director seemed to miss some opportunities in the movie. We have a scene at the beginning, where Willis tries to pick-up his female seat mate on the train and then after the train wrecks, we know that she is dead so you later expect something more out of Willis and his feelings.
Jackson also comes off as a loony throughout the film and you wonder why Willis ever talks to him at all.
There is one brilliant scene, where Jackson is trying to sell a comic art print to a man and goes through the whole history behind the print. At the end of Jackson's passionate rendition, the man says he will take the print to give to his 4-year-old son (who obviously would have no sense as to the value of the print). This infuriates Jackson enough to throw the man out of his store without selling him the print.