Vintage

Bruce Willis and M. Night Shyamalan form an unbreakable combination.  Well, at least so in the universally heralded Sixth Sense, which actually scared the bejesus out of me in a creepy way.   I am glad to say: I think the combo works fine here too, though this is a film not really of the shriek variety and not on the same greatness level, otherworldly or not, that Sixth Sense achieved.  Nonetheless, this is a damn good movie.

In Unbreakable we have wonderful acting performances.  Willis is grand as David Dunn, a security guard that seems to get incredibly lucky in life.  A fiercely clever and intelligent Samuel L. Jackson, as Elijah, a comic book dealer who believes in superheroes and villains, is wickedly superb as well.  

Elijah suspects that David Dunn (Willis) is that hero, that rare breed , that real Man of Steel who can leap buildings in a single bound.  Okay, perhaps not that type of hero (although not far off the mark).  Elijah suspects that much like he is frail, Dunn is strong;  much like he is breakable, and very breakable at that, Dunn is unbreakable.  They represent the opposite ends of a continuum of cosmic improbability.

At first glance, Dunn is the everyman ordinary worker bee, who happily goes about his duties as a security guard to make a modest if not meager living.  In fact, he works his trade at a college university where he oversees pat-downs and other turnstile security measures.  He has a knack for protecting people, as Elijah observes.  Elijah also notes that Dunn was the only person to survive a train wreck that killed 132 people. Yes, that is right – 131 died.  Dunn lived.

Why is that?  Elijah wonders and gets Dunn wondering about it too.  

For all the supernatural elements, the great thing about Unbreakable is that it is an unusually nuanced and subtle film, which could almost, in the right hands, lend itself to stage theater.  This might seem a rarity for a movie, which at the top level concerns comic book heroes and entertains the possibility that some may in fact exist for real.  This added sophistication of inwardness, depth and subtlety gives this film weight.  Superheroes are abstracted as an exaggeration of the human condition.  

Additionally, what adds to the quality of this film are the touches that director Shyamalan weaves into the cinematic experience: expertly crafted camera angles, mood lighting and calculated focus on faces. 

To tell this story the way Shyamalan intends, he needs some tried and true interesting faces on to which to paint this story.

Towards those ends, Samuel L. Jackson, who has that certain look that works equally well as a trusted friend or sneaky foe; can portray a cunningly fierce and intelligent man in a variety of character canvasses.  Robin Wright Penn did far more than serve as the female interest too.  She delivered a spot-on performance as a pained wife whose marriage was utterly lost. She was poignant and highly believable. Willis, for his part, is a much more complex actor than many would give him credit for.  At this stage in his career, his face has the weathered comfort of a well oiled catcher's mitt. 

The boy too was great.  I thought he looked as if he truly wanted to blow his father away with a handgun just so he could prove a theory that his dad was superman.  

Misguided theories, if anything, are a strong motif : from an explanation of why David Dunn can bench press weights and paint cans to unlimited bounds, to the bizarre theories of Elijah—there are a lot of puzzles that need proving. 

Unbreakable takes you on a journey of the soul, where you imagine what indeed it really would be like to suspect you were a superhero with superhuman abilities.  A lot of really interesting questions are raised and the film plays out on multiple levels.

A question that interested me quite a  bit: if one person had superhero-like abilities, but was only blessed with common human weaknesses, would that person able to take advantage of those superhero skills or would they be simply to shy to catch the speeding train?  

After all, Dunn is a normal guy and doesn’t like the spotlight.  Heck, he even shied away from it as a football star.  He wanted to remain unseen, not unbreakable, an all too fragile sensiblity in the makeup of unheralded hereos.

This film is solid King.

Matthew J. De Reno is a writer living in Pittsburgh.