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Review by Susan Granger
1 star out of 4
On paper, it looked great. Bruce Willis, the star, and
M. Night Shyamalan, the creator, of "The Sixth Sense" teaming up for
another supernatural thriller. On the screen, however, it's
unintelligible and undeniably underwhelming. Bruce Willis is a
Philadelphia football stadium security guard who is the sole survivor
of a train wreck that killed 131 people. Why? he wonders. That
question is shared by Elijah, a mysterious comic book entrepreneur who
suffers from a brittle bone disease, played by Samuel L. Jackson - in
an unkempt Afro - who poses not only a bizarre explanation but also
theorizes a purpose for the rest of Willis's life. "I believe comic
books are our last link to a form of history," he notes. Could,
perhaps, Willis be a modern-day superhero? Willis's wide-eyed 12
year-old son (Spencer Treat Clark, trying hard to be Haley Joel
Osment) is easily convinced but not his estranged wife (a surprisingly
haggard-looking Robin Wright Penn) who claims, "I don't want violence
in my life." As for Willis, he's just not sure of anything except that
he's sad and that his world is crumbling around him - like the slow,
stalemated story which has plot loopholes large enough to drive a city
bus through. During the dark, creepy, climactic chase, where does
Willis, the wet, caped crusader, get dumped on a dreary, damp, rainy
night? Underwater - and we've already been told that water is like his
Kryptonite. "Do you know what the scariest thing is?" Jackson
concludes during what passes for a twist ending. "To not know your
place in the world. Now we know who you are and we know who I am." On
the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Unbreakable" is an uncertain
3. Ostensibly about heroes and villains, basically, it's unadulterated
poppycock. Unfathomable is more like it.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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out of 4
