To say that a film, especially one released during the holiday season, is a celebration of the triumph of the human spirit adversity has become such a cliché, but the expression must be trotted out when discussing Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken.
The film, about Olympic track runner-turned-World War II POW Louis Zamperini, is precisely that, if predictable so, too.
It is one of those “epic” stories Hollywood has a knack for putting out this time o’ year. Inspiring...a reminder that we are a species capable of many things extraordinary.
And Jolie, for the most part, delivers, on only second foray behind the camera (her first was the 2011 title In the Land of Blood and Honey, a romance backdropped by the 1990s Bosnian War). Unbroken is, beat by beat, a strong film – featuring a mesmerizing leading-man turn by up-and-comer Jack O’Connell – about the resilience of a quite-remarkable individual in the face of a very particular difficulty.
Louis Zamperini – Louie – was just another son of immigrants living in America. Nothing special about the Depression-era kid until one day, under the guidance of his older brother, he began on his winning course from ne’er-do-well to uplifting legend about whom books would be written and films would be made (this offering’s based on the definitive biography by Laura Hillebrand). Louie went from running around misbehaving all over his Italian family’s adoptive California hometown to running in the 1936 Olympics. He went to college, where he set a mile record. And he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces in ’41 and was deployed to the South Pacific with a group of young men (including Jai Courtney) that, for whatever reason, Jolie showcases as if she were Bruce Weber on an Abercrombie & Fitch assignment. No doubt, the film is gorgeously shot, and a beautiful thing to behold, visually speaking – but that was an interesting choice.
Anyway....
In 1943, Louie and a crew of 10 more were tasked with flying a search-and-rescue (unfortunately, on a plane that wasn’t up to snuff). It, of course, went down hundreds of miles from land, into shark-infested waters. Louie survived, for more than a month, along only two other men (portrayed by Frank’s Domhnall Gleeson and Finn Wittrock, from FX’s American Horror Story: Freak Show).
On Day 47, he and Gleeson’s character (Wittrock’s died at sea two weeks earlier) were captured by the Japanese. As Louie put it, it was a good news/bad news sitch: they were being rescued, but the ordeal was from over.
Weeks of interrogations and beatings followed, and, eventually, the two were taken to separate POW camps where no one knew they were (no one even knew he was alive for like, two years). At his new home, Louie was singled out for a special kind of blandished punishment by his captor, the bamboo stick-wielding Mutsuhiro Watanabe. The Japanese pop star Miyavi plays the man o.k.a. the Bird, and he imbues his part with a level of ruthless entitlement rather necessary to match O’Connell’s sense of defiant nobility – which makes me think this was another good find by La Jolie....
Louie stayed at that camp until the end of the war, even when he could’ve, well...not. No, not by taking the easy way out but by selling out America and playing into the Japanese propaganda machine, something which we are told he was offered after being allowed a radio broadcast (on account of his Olympic celebrity). He chose to stay and he was put through the ringer by the Bird day in and day out and helped his fellow prisoners (including Garrett Hedlund, whose character was the de facto leader of all the POWs).
Unbroken is that film, alright – but Jolie, while beyond-effective on this particular job, I thought, was much too didactic. Her action sequences are stellar, but she sprinkles all these tug-at-your-heartstrings flashbacks and peeks inside Louie’s psyche that, I should say, more often than not come off as clumsy.
So thank goodness for her two stars. They certainly do elevate her grand-in-scope-yet-Lifetime-y approach and make this one a saga worth watching.
My Rating ***
Anyway....
In 1943, Louie and a crew of 10 more were tasked with flying a search-and-rescue (unfortunately, on a plane that wasn’t up to snuff). It, of course, went down hundreds of miles from land, into shark-infested waters. Louie survived, for more than a month, along only two other men (portrayed by Frank’s Domhnall Gleeson and Finn Wittrock, from FX’s American Horror Story: Freak Show).
On Day 47, he and Gleeson’s character (Wittrock’s died at sea two weeks earlier) were captured by the Japanese. As Louie put it, it was a good news/bad news sitch: they were being rescued, but the ordeal was from over.
Weeks of interrogations and beatings followed, and, eventually, the two were taken to separate POW camps where no one knew they were (no one even knew he was alive for like, two years). At his new home, Louie was singled out for a special kind of blandished punishment by his captor, the bamboo stick-wielding Mutsuhiro Watanabe. The Japanese pop star Miyavi plays the man o.k.a. the Bird, and he imbues his part with a level of ruthless entitlement rather necessary to match O’Connell’s sense of defiant nobility – which makes me think this was another good find by La Jolie....
Louie stayed at that camp until the end of the war, even when he could’ve, well...not. No, not by taking the easy way out but by selling out America and playing into the Japanese propaganda machine, something which we are told he was offered after being allowed a radio broadcast (on account of his Olympic celebrity). He chose to stay and he was put through the ringer by the Bird day in and day out and helped his fellow prisoners (including Garrett Hedlund, whose character was the de facto leader of all the POWs).
Unbroken is that film, alright – but Jolie, while beyond-effective on this particular job, I thought, was much too didactic. Her action sequences are stellar, but she sprinkles all these tug-at-your-heartstrings flashbacks and peeks inside Louie’s psyche that, I should say, more often than not come off as clumsy.
So thank goodness for her two stars. They certainly do elevate her grand-in-scope-yet-Lifetime-y approach and make this one a saga worth watching.
My Rating ***
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