"Do you remember me ever being sick?"

Rating: 8/10 (13 February 2005)

I was never a big fan of comic books, but I do appreciate the style and storytelling that goes into them. My favorite show growing up was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, based on a comic book, in which each episode our heroes face their enemies, but nothing is ever decided. Comic books are about episodes of action where nothing is ever ultimately decided. The 2000 movie by M. Night Shyamalan, his first movie after his surprise smash The Sixth Sense, plays as the first edition of a comic book, where the hero is immune to all ailments and broken bones and a lurking villain who is his opposite. The movie is all about discovery, as Bruce Willis plays David Dunn, the lone survivor of a railway accident. Soon after, Dunn is invited to see a comic book collector, Elijah Price, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who is brittle and always sick. Jackson figures if there is one man as weak as he, there has to be a strong man who is unbreakable, and he thinks it is Dunn. The meat of the movie deals with Dunn trying to come to grips with the prospect of near-invincibility and ability to "see" evil before it happens. The end of the movie is Dunn seeing for himself if he has the power, we learn his weakness, then we find out what the entire movie was about. My only complaint to the end of the movie, I really liked the final relationship between Price and Dunn, is how Shyamalan finished the movie. For those who have seen the movie know what I'm talking about, the final shot is of words super-imposed on the screen telling the audience what happened after the film ends. I did not want that. I loved how the movie served as a first edition of a series, but the words on the screen make it a one-episode series. Nothing in comic books is supposed to be resolved as quickly as it is in Unbreakable. That annoyed me, almost as much as the son of David Dunn, played by Spencer Treat Clark, who was annoying in Gladiator as well. For the most part, Unbreakable is a great movie, and is a great movie if you hit the "Stop" button on your DVD player just as Bruce Willis walks off the screen in the final scene.