Unimaginable. Review on Unbreakable Movie

The greatest strength of this film, 'The Sixth Sense' and films like 'Twelve Monkeys' is that the alternately brutal/subtle characterisation and bleak/comedy atmosphere force us to evaluate the characters and their beliefs in a way traditional Hollywood movies of the last couple of decades simply don't. As the film tells us, in this post-modern era we have boxed our world into a set of frames, much like the comics that this film examines.

This film deliberately sets out to break the expectations we have already set up. This film is about superheroes, but not in the American Hero way. When the possiblilty that Willis' character is a superhero arises his questions are not made in an alternative world where we know superheroes exist. Samuel L Jackson's character talks about superheroes and we are not able to dismiss this as the typical stereotyped behaviour of a movie madman character. We are forced to think about what he says. In the laughably cliched X-Men, superheroes exist, so no one questions them, but here we are not sure. Thus we cannot dismiss the suggestion of the existence of superheroes as a necessary plot device but are forced to consider it, and because we are so arrogant in our certainty of the way the world works we feel uncomfortable. We ask 'How can he say this rubbish?', we are shocked by what we hear because it doesn't play by the rules.

This film is part of what I hope is a growing movement within society, one that is trying to combat the American Dream that has produced a society so overconfidently individualistic that people think they already know all the answers. Those who do not like this film will do so because it does not fit in with what they THINK the film SHOULD be like. Or even what they think the world should be like.

The director is on record as saying he is trying to introduce a level of spirituality into Hollywood that has been lost in the post modern era. I agree. If you don't like this film then perhaps it is not the film that is to blame, but yourself.