Survival, Resilience, Repetition

Rating: 6/10 (11 December 2014)

I was given the chance to attend an advance screening of Unbroken a few nights ago. Having done a little reading up on Louie Zamperini over the past few months I was very excited to see it on the big screen. The movie starts off rather great, I loved the first half and greatly enjoyed watching Louie interact with family and war time friends. Unfortunately for the movie goer things go down hill pretty fast.
Eventually the movie turns into a big mess of "Louie is in one place where he gets beaten up... until he moves to different place to get beaten up." This continues for a very long time. I thought the scenes were all filmed extremely well, but the repetition soon over shadows any attempt at a story or character development. I understand that this was pretty much what Louie went through and I was beyond grateful that it was included in the film... to NOT include it would have been a great injustice. I just wish they would have done something with it.
For a movie that uses the tag line "Survival, Resilience, Redemption" I was hoping for way more in the area of character development. When the movie finally reaches its end we get some summery text recapping the rest of the characters lives... which tell of the redemption talked about in the tag line. My complaint is that this is really the only way you know about redemption taking place... from watching the movie there really isn't a whole lot of that happening. Throughout the movie you see tons of survival and resilience but if you were to stop watching the movie before the screen goes black and the summery text comes up you wouldn't know anything about his redemption. I felt this was a missed opportunity.
Regardless, the movie is a very enjoyable experience. I thought most of acting was great, especially Takamasa Ishihara. visually the movie was well done and the makeup was fantastic. Definitely worth seeing eventually, but I would skip the theaters and wait for the rental.