Man and Superman

Rating: Null/10 (26 November 2000)

M. Night Shyamalan's "Unbreakable" never advertised itself as a "Sixth Sense" clone so we can't claim bait and switch if "Unbreakable" doesn't meet our expectations. The suspense involving what is and is not real is just as juicy and the performances from Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis among others are well done but the payoff doesn't seem to merit all the effort. The only way to enjoy "Unbreakable" is to understand the mindset of a comic book aficionado, one who lives and breathes that special form of reality, for which Shyamalan was no doubt paying homage to. Ironically, even from that vantage point, "Unbreakable" fails to deliver any action pack adventures nor special effects. We are stuck in Philadelphia in someone's mind. There are also some incongruities you have to swallow - the Bruce Willis character, David Dunne, who doesn't seem to notice that he never gets injured nor sick; or his being a security guard but living in a well-to-do house; or his estrangement from his son Jeremy (well played by Spencer Treat Clark) and wife Megan (Robin Penn Wright) because he wakes up every day 'sad'; or the preposterous motives behind certain acts of terrorism. But "Unbreakable" does bear a strange homey value. There is the opening sequence in which Willis is trying to pick up an attractive woman on the train, his son Jeremy witnessing his astounding bench-pressing, Jeremy again wanting desperately to affirm his father as a hero, and the comforting arms of Megan trying to relieve David's nightmares. In his two efforts, Shyamalan has shown the keen ability to deliver suspense and storyline without overly spoon-feeding it to us. It's too bad that "Unbreakable" didn't have as much substance nor imagination as his first work.