Unwatchable

Rating: Null/10 (31 December 2000)

An intriguing trailer pulls on your imagination, gets you into the cinema and sits you down in front of the screen for 106 minutes. Unfortunately it is for a poorly paced tale of good against evil with the usual white versus black stereotypes, although from a novel angle. It plays as though the writer had run out of ideas and the director stretched out the film to the Hollywood bare minimum of an hour and three quarters. I disagree with many reviewers and believe the idea presented here was well worth pursuing, but the screenplay was not well written, giving usually good actors little to work with. Willis' character came across as particularly (overly?) slow-witted, but Jackson looks fantastic (and different) as usual, and to an extent retains some of the audience's attention.
Apart from a couple of superbly stressful scenes the film fails to deliver what it promised in the trailer, and is not recommended. Maybe comic book lovers will enjoy the new angle (although I have a fair collection of comics myself). Certainly ignore anyone who mentions the Sixth Sense and remove any associations with that film from your mind (why are all the reviewers here expecting another 6th Sense?). Night Shyamalan was the wrong director for this film (yes, I know he wrote it), especially if he expects to impress with daftly overt cameos.
Unbreakable is more Wide Awake than Sixth Sense. I prefer his original ghost story that he made when he was 12.