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6 months ago

Unbreakable

a review by John Chard

Soon found out had a heart of glass.

It often gets forgotten just what an exciting talent M. Night Shyamalan was during the early part of his film making career. True that Unbreakable, with its deliberate slow pacing and left-field narrative, would (and has) proved to be not everyone's cup-o-tea, but there's a film making craft here, and a genius idea brought to vivid life, that makes a spectrum of film lovers lament how his career nose dived, how his ideas quickly got as stupid as his acting...

Unbreakable challenges the thought process, spinning a story that's of a adult comic book heart, but also of a clinical human examination. The narrative is consistently ambiguous, holding the patient viewers in enthral as the cosmic conundrums come tumbling off of the screen. It's refreshing to find a story like this that is so devoid of cliché, where the wonderfully reflective Bruce Willis and the brilliantly fascinating Samuel L. Jackson feed off each other, their character's destinies superbly steered by cast and director. Unbreakable is a complex movie, but not needlessly so, its strengths are numerous for those of a keen eye and ear. It represents Shyamalan's most clever cinematic offering, to which the sad realisation comes to pass that he would never, as yet, be this smart and vibrant again. 10/10