Great film, but....

Rating: 8/10 (15 February 2005)

As an unwavering fan of Mr. M. Night Shayamalan, I must say this was good. But to clarify my perspective, I did not see this when it first came out. I rented it after having seen The Sixth Sense, Signs, and The Village. Being a fan of those three, I knew this would not disappoint.
This film has all of the prerequisites of an M. Night film....slow, brooding atmosphere, dialogue instead of action, heaps of character development, and a twist of some kind. Ultimately, this film works. It works well. We feel for the characters, want to know what will happen next, and are intrigued by the premise. All of the actors meet my expectations - there is no weak link in the acting. Shayamalan tends to pull good performances out of everyone.
That being said, I think there are two minor problems with this movie. First, the movie has a boldly slow pace, but that works for the film. What bothered me a little bit is there was about a 30 minute period of time in the movie where very little happened - in the "action" or in the characters. It seemed a repetitious - "am I really unbreakable or not? Is this guy yanking my chain or what?" This problem is minor, but with weaker actors, my attention would not have been held.
The other minor problem is how the "twist" was carried out. There is a potentially massive revelation, but it gets written off by two sentences on the screen. The climax becomes an afterthought. There is no falling action. I liked the twist, but I thought it was written off.
All in all, this is a good movie - much better than your average Hollywood entertainment. I recommend it if you like to think about movies.