Right up my alley

Rating: Null/10 (20 March 2002)

Another winner from M.Night Shaymalan. I love movies with twist endings and this one certainly blind-sided me. Unlike the end of the Sixth Sense, (which I figured out. Ok, just moments before it was revealed) Unbreakable's ending was a complete surprise for me. I loved the Sixth Sense but in that you were purposely distracted from the true nature of Bruce Willis' character. Not so much here. In this Bruce Willis plays David Dunn, the soul survivor of a passenger train accident. In fact he's not hurt at all, not so much as a scratch. Why? Through a cryptic note left on David's car, `when was the last time you where sick?' These and other questions arise. From here David starts a journey that will lead him to the answers he seeks and beyond. You as the viewer move along the same lines and make the same discoveries as David. You are not diverted from the main goal of finding the answers you seek. What feels like a movie about personal enlightenment, which it mainly is, turns also into something wonderfully unexpected. To me this was Samuel L. Jackson's best role since Pulp Fiction. Bruce Willis is as good as ever. The kid was ok but a bit annoying at times and Robin Wright was not in it enough. That aside, I think this film was brilliantly done. Some of the people I've spoken with about this movie felt suckered. They felt that the end was a let down and not consistent with the rest of the story. In my opinion it reached its intended destination I just didn't realize it until it had. If you like movies like Vanilla Sky, or if you liked the part in The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader reveals that he is Luke's father then you may like this one. That's my take. What's yours?