Shyamalan's masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (16 June 2008)

You're a young director, and you have just hit it big with an intelligent thriller called The Sixth Sense. What's your next move? An intelligent... comic-book movie? For many other filmmakers, such a gamble could have marked the end of their career; in the case of M. Night Shyamalan, it became the best film he's made to this point.
Following the old "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule, Shyamalan teams up with Bruce Willis again, and for the second consecutive time Willis plays a more subdued role compared to his signature films (no "yippee-ki-yay" moments here). His character is a security guard named David Dunn. He's an ordinary man who used to play football in high school but had to quit because of an injury. One day, he is on a train that accidentally derails, resulting in the death of all passengers but him. On top of being the only survivor, he doesn't have a single scratch on his body. No one is able to explain that, and David tries to get back to a normal life, until he runs into a wheelchair-bound comic-book fan, Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), also known as Mr. Glass since he suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta, a disease that makes his bones much more fragile than those of a normal human being. Elijah is convinced David is some kind of superhero, and sets out to prove it by asking a series of questions, the most important of which is: "How many days of your life have you been sick?".
Unbreakable does the impossible of turning a potentially geeky subject into a serious movie - with a limited budget. There are no special effects or overly weird events, meaning all Shyamalan has to tell his story is a suitable mood, James Newton Howard's music and the priceless Willis-Jackson double act. Jackson, in particular, is a bit of a revelation in a part that's miles away form his signature cool performances à la Pulp Fiction: he's brooding, intense and occasionally scary - just what's needed to make the film work. Willis, on the other hand, succeeds in conveying the humanity of a character who might not even be human.
Sure, the film is low-key and a bit slow at times, something most viewers might not like in this kind of film. Those who liked The Sixth Sense, though, will be happy to know that the director has topped himself, and the slow pace is worth putting up with in light of the epilogue, which is Unbreakable's very reason to exist. To all viewers who claimed the twist in The Sixth Sense was obvious: you won't see this one coming. Exceptional
9,5/10