The promotional spots,and trailers for Unbroken the hero Louie Zamperini first being an Olympic athlete, then being in a war, then being trapped on a liferaft for days, and finally ending up in a POW camp. This all sound inspiring. Unfortunately it's not. As Unbroken begins we see the main character Louie Zamperini in a bomber with a few other men. They are attacked. At this moment oddly I felt kind of thankful. The entire thing was shot very well,and lacked the shaky camera that pops into most modern action movies. It was missing music to bring it together though,and it was oddly not very stimulating. About 10 minutes later I figured out this is what the entire film was going to be like. The biggest problem that pops up in Unbroken is that it is ultimately unexciting, a problem that stems from the fact that you really don't get to know the main character. I will hand it to Jack O'Connell for trying his best, but the screenplay doesn't allow us to get connected to him enough to really care. The Olympic Games sequence is rushed over, and comes off uninteresting. The time on the raft offers some great cinematography, but fails to offer up meaningful drama. And after all that we get to the prison camp. This is interesting at first. I don't want to sound horrible, but that fact is what makes this interesting is the brutal treatment of the characters. This abuse actually adds an interesting haze of suspense that takes hold of you. This is ultimately helped when the film’s next really good actor, Takamasa Ishihara, comes in; unfortunately, his a role doesn't quite click. Now I really need to hand it to him because when he is first on screen he really has a presence. This film pushes its PG-13 rating in the level of violence it deals out, and this guy is the person dishing it out. His commanding performance (among other things I'll get to) keeps the film going. The haze of suspense, though, eventually fades, and what was left went something like this: main character gets hit a few times, show him with the other men in misery. This is a cycle that continues to repeat, adding little to no character development to the film. It's really unfortunate because the film did grab me for just a second, and then spent it all away. This all said, I really can hand it to Angelina Jolie for at least directing it well. When the material was uninteresting the thing that grabbed me was the direction. There is a particularly cheesy part of the film in which Zamperini has to lift a log that is very heavy to save himself from getting shot. It's a (sorry for using such a trivial word) stupid scene. But it is paced well and drawn out, allowing us to at least get used to and accept the corniness of the entire thing. The beautiful cinematography done by the master Roger Deakins also helps these types of things work. The technical work is really good here, and the problem is really the material. To wrap up... I actually don't have a wrap up. The film hasn't actually stuck with me too much. However, as I said good direction and cinematography, but the material is just not very good. I give Unbroken a 6.5 out of 10.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |