Unbreakable

A few previews of note this week: PEARL HARBOR–This looks like it could be an absolutely amazing movie. But Michael Bay directed and Jerry Bruckheimer produced. What does that mean? Lots of special effects and no substance. Shame, cause this could have been the end all be all of movies about the start of WWII. Then again, they could surprise me, actually show some restraint and not turn this into Pearlgeddon. But damn does Ben Affleck look like he belongs in those times.

PROOF OF LIFE–The movie that ended a relationship. Meg Ryan’s husband is kidnapped and Russell Crow is sent to find him by David Caruso (first warning sign). They may or may not fall in love. (Meg and Russell, not Russell and David.) So, what’s the movie about?

This actually looks pretty damn good. Should be a cool action thriller in the vain of 3 Days Of The Condor.

And now the real movie:

It’s hard to review of movie like this without having some spoilers, so if you don’t want to know anything about the plot of this movie DON’T READ ANY REVIEWS OF IT!!! Including this one. I’ll try not to give anything away, but I can’t promise anything.

Comic books are a big deal. I know it. You know it. Anyone who has ever been around or been a 12 year old boy knows it. They’re a form of escape that people who feel outcast can turn to. This is why they are a favorite pastime of teenagers and, well, geeks. There’s just not a nice word for it. The characters in them are, at their core, geeks and outcasts. They are weird in some way, be it mutated, bitten by a radioactive spider, from another planet or just carrying a lot of emotional baggage about the death of their parents. But they do something with their geekdom. They fight crime or cause crime. Either way, they overcome.

Personally, even though I was a total outcast as a teenager and am still a geek, I never really got into them. But I love the movies about them. I can get caught up in the world faster than just about anybody who picks up a comic book on a regular basis.

What the hell does this have to do with the new movie from M. Night Shyamalan and Bruce Wills?

Everything, true believers. Everything.

In 1961 a boy is born with a rare disease that allows his bones to be broken very easily. Due to that traumatic ailment he can’t lead a normal life, is constantly called Mr. Glass by the kids in his Philadelphia neighborhood and has a rather unnatural obsession with the color purple. He also has a lot of time to read lots and lots of comics.

This boy grows up to be Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), owner of a comic book art gallery and searcher of certain kinds of people.

Elsewhere in Philly, David Dunne (Bruce Willis) is surviving a horrible train wreck. It’s so horrible, in fact, that he is the only survivor. The strange thing about him is the fact that he doesn’t have a scratch on him. And Elijah thinks he knows why.

The two men contact each other and start an uneasy (at first) friendship. Is Elijah just an intelligently rambling idiot? Has his disease gone to his head? Or is he on to something when he says that David is unable to be harmed? David’s son, Jeremy (Spencer Treat Clark from Arlington Road and Gladiator) thinks he is, but that could just be wishful thinking of a young boy.

Of course, things at home aren’t helping matters for David. His wife (Robin Wright Penn) and he sleep in separate rooms trying to share their son without really sharing their lives. And David’s distance has only gotten wider since the crash. He’s living in a daze that is almost exactly the opposite of Jeff Bridges’ daze in Fearless. Jeff’s was a life-affirming, out-going daze. David’s is an introverted, “Why me?” type daze.

Every scene of the movie is a piece of a beautiful puzzle that you’re never quite sure of until the very end. Some of us who pick up on imagery and symbolism (I say “us” as if I do it all the time–I do it about one out of 100 times) may put it together a little faster than others. But even we second guess ourselves and the ending still surprises. One hint: watch for bright colors. They tend to indicate an important development. Everything is pretty drab in the movie, so they’re not hard to spot.

Shyamalan has a style that makes it seem as if you are a participant in the goings on. There are entire scenes that are shot from behind train seats or in a reflection of a TV. Not a single shot is what you would call normal. There is always something about it that’s a little off-kilter. And that works so well in this film that you almost forget about it after a while. It’s shot like the comic books that Elijah is so reverent of. And the attention to detail is amazing, from the shots of Elijah’s glass cane breaking to the shots of David’s security poncho flowing in the rainy wind.

Some of the shots are reminiscent of Hitchcock, too, such as one of Elijah falling down some stairs as he is trying to ask someone about a gun that they may be carrying. We don’t so much see him fall as we follow him as he falls. The whole scene, in fact, seems as if it were taken directly out of one of Hitch’s flicks.

He keeps his pace very slowly, but that just builds the tension. Some people said that The Sixth Sense was ass-wrenchingly slow, but it wouldn’t have worked as well if it had moved any faster. The story needed to build up to the revelations at the end. So does this one. There are no easy routes and we have to take them as they come. These two films may be slow, but the rewards far outweigh the time spent in the theatre.

The actors are at the top of their form, too. Bruce, yes, seems a little catatonic, if not comatose. But how would you be if you had just survived a train wreck like this and were slowly finding out just how indestructible you are? No matter what you say, I doubt that you would be jumping up and down for joy.

Jackson, on the other hand, gives a fairly amazing performance as the obsessed comic book lover and all around weirdo looking for a cause. He is at turns trustworthy and freaky, sometimes at the same time. He is obviously extremely intelligent, but there’s something boyish and almost naive about his love of the books that got him through a rough life. It’s as if all of life’s problems can and have been solved through these books. And he even gets to pay tribute to the role that made him famous with the scene quoted at the beginning of this review. I expected him to say, “Does Superman look like a bitch?”

And his hair puts in a great performance as well.

Robin and Spencer do a nearly equally good job as David’s long suffering wife and son. Robin really wants their marriage to work, but she’s starting to wonder if it ever will. And Spencer wants so badly for his dad to be a super hero. So much so that he takes some pretty drastic measures to try to prove it in one of the most intense scenes in the whole film. I expect quite a bit more from this little guy.

I guess the true test of a film’s greatness is whether or not you want to see it again. I can tell you that, as soon as the lights came up, I was ready to see this one again to pick out more hints that I may have missed along the way. Just like The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects, the ending had me both reveling and scratching my head.

Not a perfect film, but one of the best of the year. Can’t way for Shyamalan’s next one.