Fantastic and subtle

Rating: 10/10 (18 July 2001)

Unbreakable is yet another movie that seems to have polarized the audiences who have watched it. Some love the movie, others abhor it. Having seen it, I believe there is nothing here that is abhorrent at all.
M. Night Shyamalan is an excellent director, first of all. His touches with the camera are near genius, a true director in the classy, manipulative style of Hitchcock and Welles. His drab, depressing colors mark easily the monotony and misery that mark David Dunn's life.
As for Bruce Willis, who plays Dunn - a security guard who has never gotten sick or injured in his life: Willis is excellent in his now typical understated way, insecure and nervous. He pulls off the modern-day version of the resistent hero-to-be in fine fashion. Samuel L. Jackson -- Elijah, a fragile man with a disease that makes his bones exceptionally brittle -- is excellent in his role as the man who discovers and tries to persuade Dunn that he is the real-life version of a comicbook superhero.

Unbreakable is slow on action and long on plot. And this is by no means a derogatory comment. Although the dialogue is predominant, it adds to the story and is interesting, making this one of the few post-computer revolution movies not to use gun battles or explosions as a mainstay of its plot. Indeed, Shyamalan seems to purposely avoid such distractions by not even showing the opening train crash, instead using the TV news to describe it.
The twist ending is wonderful and delightfully Hitchcockian. Indeed, the pace and mood of this movie rings of 40s and 50s-era Hitchcock. The only potential problem is that Shyamalan is now typecast as a suspence/thriller director who throws in absurd and shocking plot twists at the end of his movies (sound familiar?). Will this be able to last, or will Shyamalan break the mold before it gets set? After all, even Hitchcock made an occasional "Juno and the Paycock".
10/10