What if superheroes existed?

Rating: 8/10 (17 February 2020)

"Unbreakable" is a 2000 mystery drama directed M. Night Shyamalan starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. The movie industry is currently dominated by superhero franchises from countless companies, Marvel and DC being the frontrunners in the comic adaptation business. They all produce film that depict pure visual greatness adapted from small issues, in most cases the classic fight of good and evil. Doesn't matter whose side the people are on, both heroes and villains have always been idols and icons for many generations in the past decades and we can't even imagine it will ever change, although we're all aware that they are obviously fictional characters from an obviously fictional universe that would never exist in our own reality. But what if? What if superheroes existed in reality? While films like "Kick-Ass" approach this basically abstruse question in a more humorous way, this MNS film explores it with immense seriousness. With the same fascination I felt while watching "Split" (who come?) I followed the characters in this mysteriously conceptualised thriller. In this film, the director once again show that he has a sure feeling concerning screenwriting. The film consists of extremely smart dialogues and was executed with ingenious camera work and I once again wondered how it was possible that he seems to have lost this gift in the following decade. Without leading the plot ad absurdum it intelligently unfolds the secrets of its protagonist David Dunn who gradually begins to match the superhero ideals. It's the immensely high love for detail that makes it so magnificent: from his profession as a security guard to a personal weakness he fulfills all of it in a realistic way. It's less a thriller and more of a carefully narrated essay on the possibility of supernatural humans in our society that even succeeds to adopt the colorful visuals of a comic book and combine it with the reality. Willis and Jackson both acted greatly in their third collaboration and really made their characters come to life. It could have been a masterpiece, but there's this one aspect about it that severely bothers me. The film had a perfectly paced build up in terms of tension, but the last third of the film stays on the same continuous level. I knew that film would not last any longer and wondered if something more intense would happen, but no, we only got an plot twist that might have come unexpected, but in the end was an extremely underwhelming conclusion to an at this point brilliant film. It was simply too rushed and didn't do the rest of the film justice, it almost feels like Shyamalan ran out of ideas to creatively round up his own film and it's tremendously unsatisfying in the end. By all means, it's definitely not a terrible ending, but the director's style falsely lead the film's plot into a direction it would not even follow eventually. It's just the beginning of a conflict between good and evil, David Dunn vs Elijah Price and offers no further development afterwards. All in all, this thriller is an absolutely interesting and we'll crafted character study that never loses its serious tone, grips its audience and definitely is a welcome change in the superhero sub-genre, but could have been a masterful work if it wasn't for the undeniable logical but somewhat lazy final conclusion. It could have gone deeper into the character and their development, but ends it just like this instead. After having seen its unexpected successor, I'm absolutely stocked for the third installment of this trilogy and hope it treats the other films with enough respect.