Not as emotional as it should be, but there's a lot of good content within

Rating: 7/10 (28 January 2015)

I've heard people had mixed feelings about "Unbroken", and I do have to admit that it doesn't really pack the emotional punch that it should, but it is a story worth seeing. You should try and catch this drama if only because its like 4 tales jam-packed into 1. Based on true events, it's the story of Louis "Louie" Zamperini (played by C.J. Valleroy as a child and Jack O'Connell as an adult). He was an Olympic runner for the United States in 1936 (a pretty big feat all in itself) who overcame adversity when he and two friends found themselves stranded in the middle of the Pacific ocean for months... only to be "rescued" by the Japanese and sent to POW camps.
This movie has got so much going on in it I'm surprised they didn't pull a "Hobbit" and split it up into 4. First we've got the rise of an underdog, a kid who's up to no good and whose life is spinning out of control who rises to become an Olympic athlete. Those kinds of stories make it to the silver screen all of the time and they're always at least a little bit heartwarming to see. Next, we have the story of survival. Louie and his friends are stuck in the middle of the ocean with few supplies, little hope and plenty of sharks in the water. Think running out of food is a problem? How about becoming food? Think "Life of Pi", but with less tiger. Then we've got the whole POW camp thing, with our hero being mercilessly tormented by Mitsuhiro "The Bird" Watanabe (Japanese singer-songwriter Miyavi). Finally, the film concludes with the aftermath of the war and what it meant to the people in that camp and Louie's family. What I liked about the movie is that it kept changing. It felt like real life because you never knew what was going to happen next and it wasn't one grand adventure that wrapped itself up cleanly, it was one catastrophe after another. I liked the fact that this was a real uphill battle. It's filled with seemingly insurmountable odds for our hero to tackle. Seeing a spirit determined to keep on going being tested like this, it's exhilarating.
While at its core, this movie is about not giving up and always hoping for the best, I also found another pertinent element to it, one that's more subtle and is only said explicitly at the very end of the movie... kind of. The bulk of this film is set during WWII. Despite the fact that you can easily pick out which sides of the conflict were "good" and which side was "Evil", this movie made me look past the black-and-white element of this war. I think the film is an argument for not judging people, particularly when they are in a situation where you have to become a different type of person to survive. Let me give you an example. Our hero is being tormented by the officers in the Japanese prisoner of war camp. It's incredibly infuriating to see him being so unfairly mistreated. You see some people take less punishment than him, and give up. Your instinct would be to get angry over the quitters, and I suppose I did, but in retrospect, I feel like I'm unfit to judge them. War is a horrible thing. It forces people that would never hurt a fly to kill each other and it steals away innocence. When it comes to survival, this movie has both aspects covered. It's got sequences where people will do absolutely ANYTHING in order to survive. It's also got scenes where people refuse to back down from their code of ethics, even if it means suffering or even dying. I felt like "Unbroken" made a conscious effort to show that the good guys and the bad guys weren't just black-and-white caricatures of evil Japanese soldiers and brave American heroes. They were people who had the extremely poor fortune of being born in a time where being yourself wasn't an option because of the war. If anything, the movie argues for compassion and looking past nationalities and roles in a conflict and leaving the past behind in order to move on. I've been blessed because I've never had to experience war, so the best I can do is watch a movie like "Unbroken" and wonder how I would react to the atrocities these soldiers had to experience. I enjoyed placing myself in the shoes of Louie. Faced with these kinds of challenges, would I be able to muster up the same kind of courage that he did? This movie got inside my head and I have been thinking about it a lot, so I recommend that you see it. That said, I can't deny that it isn't as moving as it should be. I would have been moved if ANYONE had endured what Louie did, so in this case, the events in the film far supplant the characters. It is an emotional experience, but mostly because anyone would have a hard time seeing a human being mistreated in the way that Louie is. I liked the movie, I was glad I saw it, but I've seen lives that were much less eventful be made into far more moving films. One last note, you're probably wondering how hardcore the scenes of torture are in this film. They're really not that extreme. There are no racks, or thumbscrews or anything like that, it's mostly just people being hit and demoralized through constant mistreatment. No "Hostel" business at all. A PG rating is a bit of a stretch, but even pre-teens could watch this film and not be traumatized by it if accompanied by an adult and given a discussion on the themes of the story. I liked "Unbroken" a lot, but it's more of a good film than a great one. (Theatrical version on the big screen, January 13, 2015)