Brilliant

Rating: 9/10 (17 December 2000)

When I was young, I noticed people can look surprisingly similar -- like long lost twins, but having completely different parents or even a twin of different ethnicity. Although I learned later that this is statistically impossible, I never really gave up on the notion; it lay dormant somewhere in my mind, until I watched Unbreakable.
It's funny in a way because the film was not about someone who looked identical to someone else. Rather, it was something about how opposites can be so similar, and as much as one needs to understand evil to understand good, hot from cold, we learn about ourselves from people who are dissimilar from us: "Now that we know who you are, I know who I am." It's the search and exploration of the anti-self to understand one self.
I started this film expecting something similar to The Sixth Sense, and ended it being awed and impressed at the suggestion of self-exploration -- a journey within oneself -- to know the person I think I understand. Certainly I will refrain from blowing up airplanes and causing trains to derail to find my opposite.
Don't start this film just to expect a surprise ending (there is one), or view multiple times just to search for clues. View the film in order to understand one, you must understand the opposite.