Well-shot and well-acted, but the film is too much a one-note story of survival against the odds.

Rating: 6/10 (13 February 2015)

Truth is stranger than fiction, so they say, a point fairly well- proved by the life and experiences of Louis Zamperini - a man who competed in the Olympics, survived almost fifty days while lost at sea, and endured untold torture as a prisoner-of-war during WWII. Myths and legends can be constructed around any one of those feats; for them to be combined in one life is pretty darn extraordinary. Angelina Jolie's Unbroken - sporting a charmingly blunt title which pretty much gives away both plot and character trajectory in a single word - pays decent, beautifully-shot tribute to these defining moments in Zamperini's life, but somehow forgets to shine a spotlight on the man himself.
"If you can take it, you can make it" is the motto young Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell) inherits from his brother. And so a wayward boy with discipline problems finds himself training to be a track star. He gets so darn good that he impresses the world with a 56-second final lap at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In a few years' time, athlete becomes airman - Louis enlists as a bombardier with the US Army. When seeking a lost aircraft, the defective plane carrying Louis and his crew-mates breaks up over the Pacific Ocean - forcing sole survivors Louis, Phil (Domhnall Gleeson) and Mac (Finn Wittrock) to survive shark attacks and starvation on a pair of flimsy life-boats. For 47 days, Louis is cast adrift, but rescue doesn't equate to salvation. Instead, he's captured by the Japanese Navy and forced to spend the rest of the war in a POW camp, the pet target of brutal prison guard Mutsuhiro Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara).
Watching Unbroken is an odd experience. There's a lot of it that's very good indeed. Jolie certainly knows how to cut a scene together, injecting brutal tension into Louis' encounters with sharks of both the literal and metaphorical variety. It's difficult, and occasionally enlightening, to watch as Louis fends off physical attacks with memories of his mother's delicious gnocchi recipe, or stands his ground as every soldier in his camp is commanded to punch him in the face. Most touching of all is a moment when Louis touches civilisation and real food again in a Japanese commissariat, and must decide whether to turn his back on it for a life far cruder and darker.
And yet, the film never quite manages to conjure up much of an emotional impact - which is curious considering that it's so keenly focused on the triumph of the human spirit in the face of untold adversity. The problem here lies in the screenplay, though you wouldn't expect it since it's credited to experienced writers who have crafted considerably more artful and subtle works: Joel and Ethan Coen (Inside Llewyn Davis, No Country For Old Men), Richard LaGravenese (Behind The Candelabra, The Fisher King) and William Nicholson (Gladiator).
In effect, Unbroken exists in just one key: a sad but triumphal note of survival, with little else to colour in the complexities of all that Louis has suffered. Without exploring the real-life effects his days at sea or in a POW camp have had on him (including his descent into alcoholism and the recovery of his religious faith), Louis comes across as a stoic superhero: a man with such incredible fortitude that he becomes almost uninteresting in the process.
That's through no fault of Jolie's leading man. O'Connell does great work with what he's given, shedding his clean-cut good looks and innocence as the war drives blood, dirt and horror into his very soul. It's a shame, really, that he's not given more to do. Gleeson and Wittrock are quietly devastating as two young men trapped in a traumatic situation, each tested to their absolute limits by the hunger and horror of it all. Ishihara, better known to Asian audiences as rock star Miyavi, has been criticised for playing a comically shallow villain, but there's some depth to be found here - at least if you take the character of Watanabe (in reality one of the most wanted war criminals in Japan) as a metaphor for the trials of his own country and countrymen.
As a chronicle of one period in Louis Zamperini's remarkable life, Unbroken fares reasonably well. Every bit of it is vividly realised: from the war he lived through to the days he spent floating on the open ocean. The entire film is handsomely shot in almost painterly style, the cinematography by renowned director of photography Roger Deakins rich with detail and colour. But Unbroken never really asks us to care about its protagonist; we are simply called upon to admire him. That's an easy enough task for any audience to accomplish. The film would have worked far better, however, if it had dared to depart from its title once in a while: to show us a man who became whole again when the world conspired to break him.