So Flat That it Might As Well Have Come in a Cardboard Box Mailed to Jolie's House

Rating: Null/10 (30 December 2014)

BY RYAN C. SHOWERS
The trailer for "Unbroken" did not fool me—I knew something was off from the overly sentimental and uninspired footage months ago. After seeing the film though, I was correct in detecting the film's mediocre quality but not for the reason I thought. Angelina Jolie's directing style, as demonstrated with "Unbroken," is to make the audience respond to her. She wants to see us flinch, jump, and wince. In theory, this sounds like a good quality to have, right? Well no, not if it's the only quality you have to engage the thinking viewer.
Imparting the intensity of a situation seemed to be on her agenda as the primary objective. In this regard, "Unbroken" does impale us with the extremity of the airplane scenes, the deserted emptiness of the ocean, and the grueling torture Louis Zamperini endured. (The ultimate "jump scare" of the film is when a shark attacks the survivors of the airplane crash on their raft. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in my theater leaped out of their seats.)
The problem with her work in "Unbroken" is that the emotional narrative is left astray. Though Louis remains "unbroken" by the actions committed against him, Jolie never lets us inside Zamperini's mind and shows us how he internalizes this physical and emotional pain. The dramatic moments that would have serviced this aspect of the story are deserted by Jolie, and instead, she leaves us to just witness the atrocities Zamperini valiantly overcomes. The action is there, but the emotions and understanding are not.
The worst thing about "Unbroken" is the ghastly screenplay, a text that surprisingly took a total of five writers to compose fully. This script is one of the worst adapted screenplays 2014 saw. The film's structure for the first half an hour is pointless, flashing back in time while relating nothing from said flashbacks to the present day scenes. The dialogue is terrible; clichéd, cheesy conversations and motivational phrases guide most of the narrative (including the unforgivably trite name-calling, bullying, homosexual jokes). The most damaging of it all is the lack of actual plot of which the movie is made up. There is no coherent "storyline" but rather a collection of events that one man was able to withstand.
Jack O'Connell does a fine job in portraying Zamperini, but his acting can only take the characterization so far. The characters in "Unbroken" are so flat and one-dimensional that they might as well have come in a cardboard box mailed to Jolie's house. The closest thing to an attempt at humanizing Zamperini is by alluding to character flaws through dialogue and that he sneaked alcohol in a milk-bottle as a child. Otherwise he's always seen doing the right thing, being a model for us mere mortals to emulate, and always remaining "unbroken". The supporting characters receive even less development. The main antagonist, revoltingly played by Miyavi, is given no justice whatsoever.
Jolie, herself, has proclaimed that the message of "Unbroken" is the power of forgiveness, yet I struggle to recognize this supposed ultimate-metaphor considering the portion of Zamperini's story that displays his forgiving of the captors is only shown at the end of the feature in the form of title-cards. "Unbroken" is actually a loosely-written, action-dependent film about how one man surmounts insurmountable physical plights. The movie Jolie describes was actually made and released earlier this year, "The Railway Man", starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman.
Having addressed all of my problems with the final product, I must say that "Unbroken" is technically apt and deserves Oscar nominations in cinematography, original score, sound mixing, and sound editing. (These technical elements are most utilized in the captivating plane scenes that open "Unbroken" and the most of the raft scenes.) The photography illustrated by the great Roger Deakins is especially beautiful and artistic, and the sound design will ring your eyes and pin you to your seat.
"Unbroken" is intentionally epic, almost to a fault. You will grow tired of it by the third act, all of Jolie's tricks will be behind you, and you will be ready to pack up and leave.
Grade: C+
* * / * * * *