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David Dunn (Bruce Willis) wakes up every morning feeling sad,
but he doesn’t know why. He’s been having problems
with his wife, Audrey (Robin Wright Penn), and has been somewhat
distant from his son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark) but that’s
not it. The answers begin to come through a frail man named Elijah
(Samuel L. Jackson) and David’s discovery that he’s
never been sick or hurt in his life.
Right from the beginning, Unbreakable tells us that it’s
about comic books and it keeps it up all the way through. The
camera work often shifts and holds and shifts again to give a
real comic book panel feel to the film. We also get all of the
comic book trappings in the story that Elijah describes along
the way, making this film more of a successful comic book than
many of the other superhero films that have come out in the past
while.
M. Night Shyamalan’s script is as crafty as The
Sixth Sense, and even more fun. Elijah’s enthusiasm
is frequently funny and his motivations as compelling. James Newton
Howard’s score is intense and beautiful at just the right
times, and the dark tint of the picture adds to the largely somber
mood of the film.
I like the biblical names. David the hero, Elijah the prophet,
and Joseph the wise, favored son. I like the comic book parallels
and David’s special ability. And I like Elijah’s character
all around. But most of all, I like the cure for David’s
sadness. Despite the supernatural undertone of the story it strikes
soundly and actually becomes something uplifting.
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