Unthinkable

Rating: 1/10 (11 December 2000)

Well, this is the 328th review on IMDB, so I'm probably not going to say anything that hasn't been said yet.
I will just say that, more than any other movie I can think of, I am absolutely shocked that this movie has a 7.7 rating and ANY positive reviews at all. In my opinion, this is indicative of the fact the movie going public no longer understands what makes a good film or even recognizes one when they see it. Unbreakable was an attempt at a two hour character study, primarily of two men. I'm guessing it was meant to be a character study because there isn't a plot or story line to speak of. This is fine, character studies can be interesting, unfortunately we are spoon fed little pieces of information in one scene, and then shown the effect of it in the very next, as if we were being spoon fed the dimensions of the characters.

For all the benefit of the doubt M. Night Shyamalan gave his audience in The Sixth Sense, he treats them like complete idiots in Unbreakable, making sure he drops a small foreshadowing to the audience before hitting them over the head with the actual event to make sure they understood. And even with this heavy handed approach, we ultimately end up with two people we don't care about swimming around in a thin story based on the incredible assumption that someone wouldn't realize that they had never been sick or injured in their entire life until it was pointed out to them.
In fact, the entire foundation of premises this movie is built upon is so fanciful and preposterous, that even a reasonable suspension of disbelief is impossible.
Lastly, the camera work, particularly the artsy shots, should LEND to the storytelling, not take away from it. Every time Shyamalan indulges in one of these sequences, he is not highlighting something important, he is reminding us we are only watching a movie. What he did so skillfully in The Sixth Sense comes across as random and forced in Unbreakable. Top this off with one of the most ridiculous scenes ever put on film in a serious movie (those who have seen it will probably know what I am talking about, those who don't heed my warning and go see it anyway, just watch for the scene with the kid and the gun), and you have a self-indulgent pile of trash unworthy of even going straight to video. I don't know if Shyamalan was rushed to get this out, or if he got Kevin Costner syndrome after the success of his first movie and decided that he could mail one in, but Unbreakable is Unthinkably bad. At the very very least, do yourself a favor and catch it for free on HBO or Showtime, or spend a buck and watch it in the dollar theatres, where it will be very soon I hope, making room for something more palatable.