Jolie shows more talent for visuals than her generic portrait of Olympian and WW II Prisoner-of-War Hero

Rating: 6/10 (19 January 2015)

Angelina Jolie's biopic of Olympian and World War II Prisoner of War, Louis Zamperini, almost falls into the category of hagiography. I agree with Kyle Smith writing in the New York Post that "on a scene-by-scene basis, the film works perfectly well." But I also agree with him somewhat that the movie is "trite" and "thin of character." I have never been a big fan of Angelina Jolie, but I can't help but feel she's endured some significant Jolie-bashing just because she is who she is.
While the "Unbroken" scenarists have trouble making Zamperini into something more than a generic hero, the basic facts of what he went through are gripping enough. Particularly in the two early sequences where Zemperini is a bombardier for the US Army Air Force on a B-24 bomber, Jolie shows her mettle in constructing some thrilling action scenes.
The flashbacks to Zamperini's childhood don't work as well as they're fraught with clichés. Joe Walsh in Cine Vue points out that Zamperini's brother "encourages the young Louis to compete long distance running and provides trite motivational speeches. The emotional drive of these moments is there to kindle a sense of the rise to glory; hard work is demonstrated through a series of running montages that imitate Chariots Of Fire (1981), all of which adds up to be surprisingly dull."
Jolie's attention to detail in recreating the 1936 Olympics is quite welcome and I found it interesting that Zamperini came in eighth in the 5,000 meter race he competed in but broke the record for the fastest fractions in the final lap (the fact that Zamperini was actually congratulated by Hitler is left out of the narrative; it might have been interesting if Jolie left that sequence in).
Perhaps the best sequence in the film is Zamperini's 47 day survival at sea. It's not only how he survived (of the two other men he was with, one of them died), but we also get a sense of what some of the other characters he interacted with, were all about.
Zamperini's sojourn as a Japanese prisoner of war pretty much sticks to the facts as detailed in the Hillenbrand biography. I found out that Zamperini was indeed punched by most of his fellow soldiers upon orders of the sadistic Sgt. Watanabe (aka "The Bird"). Zamperini was also forced by Watanabe to hold a beam up, which he did for an extraordinary 37 minutes (although it seems like hours as Jolie frames it). Shooting the whole sequence as if Zamperini was some Christ-on-the-cross figure, was a bit too much! Including Zamperini's trip to Tokyo where he spoke on the radio and later declined to be part of Japanese propaganda broadcasts, was a fascinating digression in contrast to the scenes in the camp, ably highlighting his heroic demeanor.
Of the critics who weren't thrilled with aspects of "Unbroken," some felt there was wasn't enough character development. Tim Robey writing in "The Telegraph' bemoaned the exclusive focus on Zamperini: "But when Louie's self-belief is the only subject on screen, which is gormlessly often, Jolie presses her young lead into a lot of face-pulling, anguished grimaces and screams of violent elation. We are not dragged deeply into either a man's soul or his character." Joe Walsh said that Jolie, "focuses too much of what he endured and how he survived such suffering, crafting a lackluster and dull film about an incredibly remarkable man."
Unlike the classic "Stalag 17," "Unbroken" fails to develop any of the characters of Zamperini's fellow prisoners of war. Justin Chang notices this shortcoming, writing in Variety: "Jolie sensitively conveys the solemn intimacy and tender camaraderie that arise among men at war, but she never captures these soldiers in all their bawdy, rough-and-tumble vigor and rebellious energy; nor does she evoke the fire in Zamperini's belly that made him not just a survivor but a natural-born leader, his instincts and intellect as nimble as his feet.
Rodrigo Perez in "The Playlist" suggests that "Unbroken" is too long: "Suffering from pacing and monochromatic tonal issues —various types of drab torture for two hours— "Unbroken" is also overlong and eventually settles into a slog with little narrative drive." And Roger Moore in "Movie Nation," finds the film derivative: "But if we've seen the beatings, the maddening stretches of solitary confinement, the war of wills between the stoic serviceman and the sado-homosexual Japanese camp commander in one film, we've seen it in five–pretty much every film from "The Bridge on the River Kwai" to "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" to last year's "The Railway Man."
Lawrence Toppman, writing in the "Charlotte Observer," felt there was quite a bit more to Zamperini's story, mainly dealing with his post-war experiences: "We don't see his alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder after coming home, the decay of his marriage, the vengeful hatred that led him to strangle his captors in his nightmares. Nor do we see his conversion to Christianity after a 1949 Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles, an event he credited with saving his sanity, marriage and perhaps his life. He was able to forgive his tormentors, even going back to Japan to try to do so in person. Perhaps the filmmakers were afraid his devout faith would consign their movie to the low-attendance ghetto where Christian movies often land."
In the end, "Unbroken" held my interest. Jolie has more flair for the visual than the narrative, which, unfortunately, focused a bit too much on Zamperini's "self-belief," and not other aspects of his character. The supporting players also got short shrift in terms of character development. All in all, "Unbroken" is worth watching, despite its shortcomings.