Unbreakable

Year: 2000
Genre: Mystery / Drama
Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Plot: The only survivor of a horrific train crash tries to figure out why he survived with the help of an eccentric comic book collector.


The gist: This film is M Night Shyamalan's tribute to comic book heroes, and it's clear he went to great lengths to make it stand out. Like most of his work, Unbreakable is mostly quiet and deliberately slow, but it never really gets dull, which is commendable.

Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson play off each other very well, the former as a security guard with marriage problems and the latter as a strange man with a rare condition revolving around brittle bones. Together they lead the story on discovering each other's identities, the answer to that being the obligatory Shyamalan twist.


The good: The cast perform very well. Besides Willis and Jackson, special mention goes to Robin Wright and Spencer Treat Clark as Willis' wife and son respectively. Credit must also be given to Eduardo Serra for his great camerawork, like using reflections every now and then to focus on his performers, as well as using contrasting colors to differentiate between certain people.


The bad: If you attempt to compare this to The Sixth Sense, you'll find this film a bit wanting. It is well made, but falls a bit short to that pioneering Shyamalan classic.


Verdict: Unbreakable is a solid film that will keep you engaged if you let it do so. (3.5/5)