"Do you know what the scariest thing is? To Not know you're place in this world" - A comment on THAT ending.

Rating: 9/10 (26 December 2001)

WARNING Major Spoilers
"I think it's time we shuck hands", and with the simple line, the last hundred minutes of Unbreakable become painfully clear. We now know why Shyamalan began his film with the birth of Elijah Price (Jackson), because it is Elijah who has been more important in the plot of the film than David Dunn (Willis) ever was. This film is not about superheros, it's about emotional pain, the confession of Elijah given at the end is heartbreaking, the things he's talking about are things that affect people everyday, but through his acts it's clear that his pain has driven him to insanity. The ending doesn't make you look at the film any differently, but instead, on subsequent viewings we notice how Elijah acts. On first viewing we are too rapped up in Willis' character, and his shock discovery that he might be a little different than he had thought, but on second or third viewings we see more and more the pain that is driving Elijah to set up these events. Elijah has to be sure of David's powers to make sure he is right "Now I know who you are, I know who I am" he states in his confession, he goes on, drawing parallels through the comic books that took away the pain of his childhood, to his own life "I'm not a mistake, in a comic do you know how you can tell who the arch villain is going to be, he's the exact opposite of the hero". Elijah goes to great lengths to point out to David how the "sacrifices" and the "tragedies" where not in vein, because now he has purpose, incapable of understanding just how far his mind has gone, as the revelation goes on, more and more of the pain Elijah has gone though is revealed. "I should have know way back when, because of the Kids, they called me Mr Glass"... And with that we know that Shyamalan has succeeded with this film (unlike the Sixth Sense) is completely pulling the wool over the audiences eyes. If the film ended right at this point Unbreakable would be a 10/10 for sure, but no.
End of Spoilers
Now we come to the proper comment on the film, no in-depth analysis here, just an honest comment, for you see Shyamalan was obviously so hungry for the same success of The Sixth Sense (but didn't want to compromise his artistic integrity) that he cops out with the last few seconds. Instead of leaving the film on a cliff-hanger, allowing the audiences to use their imagination, Shyamalan has to end his film with two tacked on title cards that explain the events that will happen after the film has faded to black, this was a foolish and lazy move on the part of the writer/director, and for me spoiled the ambiguity that the film had been building right until the shock revelation left me begging for more. Unbreakable is a great film and deserves to be studied and pondered over, if it had ended twenty seconds earlier, we could have been dealing with one of the most underrated modern classics of the last ten years. 9/10