Movie Review: Unbreakable
What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that this movie has a lot of violence. Although most of it is offscreen, its themes -- including sexual assault, murder of the parents of two children, and genocide -- may be especially disturbing. A child uses a gun. There's a brief vulgar reference and an implication of date rape.
- Families can talk about how we find our "place in the world," and the importance of recognizing our special gifts so that we can make the best use of them. If members of the family enjoy comic books, they may want to talk about the tradition of pictoral story-telling, the themes of hero and arch-villain and what makes them so enduring. We often think of good guys and bad guys as opposites, but we should also think about what they have in common.
UNBREAKABLE stars Bruce Willis as David Dunn, a security guard who seems disconnected from his own life, unable to remember very much about his past and unwilling to connect to his wife and child. When he is the only survivor of a train crash, walking away without a single injury, bruise, or scratch, he is contacted by Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a comic art dealer who has a congenital bone disease. Price has bones that break easily; Dunn has bones that never break. Price believes there must be a connection, and that he must help Dunn find his destiny. Themes of good and evil, hero and enemy, strength and vulnerability, thesis and antithesis, and destiny and choice appear throughout the movie. Several times, characters see something upside down at first, and then have to turn it around to see it clearly. Price helps Dunn realize that he is more than a security guard. He is a protector. When Dunn begins to use his gifts, he begins to lose the sadness that has always engulfed him. When he tells his wife he had a nightmare, he is not referring to the murderer he has just battled but to a past in which he was able to sense tragedy around him but was not aware that he had the ability to protect people from it.
The big surprise ending of Unbreakable is what a disappointment it is. The writer/director of The Sixth Sense begins with many of the same elements -- Bruce Willis, a Philadelphia setting, a strained marriage, a child who is grappling with some big issues, elements of the supernatural, and a twist at the end. Once again, he creates a haunting and portentous mood with subdued performances, somber hues, and fluid camera movements. But unlike The Sixth Sense. in which a surprise at the end kicked the entire movie into a higher gear (and inspired audiences to go see it again to help them unravel it), this one has an ending that inspired hoots and boos at the screening I attended. In particular, the "what happens after the movie ends" description that appears onscreen just before the credits is the worst I have ever seen.
The Sixth Sense
Heroes
Hancock
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