Not bad, but there are more powerful related movies out there

Rating: 7/10 (6 March 2015)

True or mostly true stories about strong people who survived tough circumstances are often catchy to follow, particularly if a person did not get into trouble "voluntarily", but due to a certain force majeure. World War II was such a mayhem when staying alive no matter what was the virtually the main thing, other things like broken families/opportunities/careers seemed secondary, if not lower.
Thanks to the Coen Brothers and Angelina Jolie, above all, we are able to follow the childhood and youth of Louie Zamporini, until his return from a Japanese prison camp in 1945. Rough environment and sports made him tough and let him survive so many such events that even 1 one of those could be easily fatal to most of us. But Zamporini landed on his feet and lived 97 years, all in all... The pace is not always dynamic and some scenes are protracted, but the movie in question is generally a smooth narration about the war perceived by single, "ordinary" people.
The cast is even in a sense that there are no famous persons stealing the slow. True, Jack O'Connell as Zamperini and Takamasa Ishihara as Mutsuhiro "The Bird" Watanabe spend more time on screen than others, with the characters more elaborated, but still, there are no pointless supporting characters among them who say something, they have good complementary significance. Thus, Unbroken is a good watch, but it is still no The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Great Raid, Empire of the Sun, or similar - no such profundity.