Had this film had a script, it could have been a classic

Rating: Null/10 (19 January 2001)

M. Night Shyamalan is now a star. Which means that he is now recognised as the master storyteller he is. But it also means that every film he makes from now on will be compared to the Sixth Sense, where he cleverly misled the audience and suddenly hit them with the sledgehammer which was the ending when they weren't looking. So now everyone going to this film expects to get the same. And they do. But because of a script which is thin and flimsy and one which never takes off an amazingly clever movie is ruined and the ending doesn't have the same effect. Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is quite possibly one of the best directed movies EVER. I am not exaggerating. The opening 20 minutes show what a master Shyamalan is even at this early stage in his career, never letting the audience relax into a 'normal' viewpoint, making you permanently uncomfortable for the entire film as in Kubrick's The Shining. We can never relax and early in the film when we get to see Robin Wright Penn's disturbingly sunken trachea (lighting exaggerates it to make us cringe) we are at the height of discomfort. All through the film Shyamalan's genius and I do mean that, is evident such as the half-lighting of Willis' face (lighting and technical codes are plain sailing for him now). All of this is superb, and we are just waiting for the plot to develop and it doesn't. Willis simply realises he's a superhero (it sounds like a lot but its not told right) and nothing becomes of it. The plot relies on flimsy little pieces of unsteady info to support the entire film's reason for being. The problem with this film is that its plot is based solely on mere story elements, (which are things which help us understand characters and their motives better, not actually advance the plot) such as Willis never getting sick or Jackson (superbly untypecast, I might add) being obsessed with comic books. Shyamalan should get someone to do his writing, because this COULD have been one of the best films ever made, and could so easily but the fact still remains that when it comes to directing ,there are few better than the man from Philadlphia.