M. Night Shyamalan is quickly growing a reputation in Hollywood as an excellent storyteller. His last film, The Sixth Sense, was one that connected with audiences because of its moody atmosphere and surprise twists and turns in the plot. Now Shyamalan has reteamed with his Sixth Sense star Bruce Willis to craft a brilliant thriller that actually surpasses his previous effort. Not only does Unbreakable provide thrills, it is also ripe with powerful acting and thoughtful character development.
As the film opens, the audience is already in the dark about where the story is going. The first scene is set in the 1960s as a child is born under mysterious circumstances; he comes out of the womb with four broken bones. Before we can even begin to question who this child is, the focus shifts to Willis's character David Dunne riding a train home to Philadelphia to New York. We watch him remove his wedding ring in a feeble attempt to accost a young attractive woman sitting by him. But right as the audience begins to wonder what is happening, the action switches direction again when the train suddenly derails.
Shyamalan recognizes that a truly great filmmaker does not reveal the entire story at once; instead he chooses to slowly build the story up with clues. Shyamalan doesn't ever show us the actual derailment; he builds it up first as David seems to become hypersensitive to his surroundings. The train jostles and jolts him about, and the level of noise in the passenger car rises to a cacophony. But as the tension mounts, the ground is quickly ripped from beneath us as the scene cuts to a young boy watching television. It is only when he comes across the news reports of the train wreck that we learn of the accident secondhand. This technique is more subtle than if we had actually seen the gruesome details of the wreck; it leaves it up to the audience to fill in the blanks in their imagination and heightens our desire for more.
The pieces slowly begin to fall into place shortly after the train wreck, but every question that is answered reveals more unknowns. David somehow manages to survive the accident without any injuries, and he is soon approached by Elijah Price, played by Samuel L. Jackson. Price is the boy we saw born in the opening scene; he has a rare genetic disease that makes his bones as brittle as glass. He believes that Dunne is his polar opposite, someone who cannot be harmed like the superheroes in comic books.
Willis plays Dunne brilliantly as a man in denial. Dunne refuses to believe that he is extraordinary but he also can't help but be drawn in by the questions Price asks him about his past. We watch as Dunne tries to return to his old life with his wife Audrey and their son after he miraculously escapes death in the train wreck. He attempts to deal with survivor's guilt by attending the funeral of those who were killed, but only ends up feeling more empty. He is wrought with confusion about why and how he was spared, and his marriage is slowly crumbling as he grows more and more emotionally distant from his family. Willis portrays each of these emotions powerfully by withdrawing within himself, speaking in short, taut sentences uttered at a barely audible whisper, almost to the point at which the audience is ready to scream at him to speak up. This film is really about his journey towards self-discovery, as Dunne must come to terms with the fact that he is different from other people, has abilities beyond their means. As the story unfolds, Willis slowly pulls his character more and more out of his shell until he finally begins connecting with the world again.
Price then is the agent of Dunne's change. His questioning about Dunne's past sets that journey in motion, and Jackson plays Price well as the mysterious man with all the answers. Yet throughout the film Jackson makes his character seem a tad askew, as if his obsession is unhealthy. Price visits Dunne's wife Audrey at work and spooks her with his strange knowledge abut her family, and a scene where Price sits motionless in a comic book store carries a hint of sinisterness underneath the surface. Jackson succeeds in taking a character with brittle bones and an unhealthy fixation on comic books and adding real dimension to the role.
Shyamalan the writer's script follows Dunne as he learns more and more about himself, and it manages to make much of the fantasy believable by presenting the events as they might happen to real people. Dunne begins to realize that Price might be right about his abilities while lifting his weights. His son keeps loading weights on, and Dunne keeps lifting it without any difficulty. Both characters are afraid of what they're finding out, but they can't help but keep pressing on and adding more weight. This mixture of fear, excitement, and even a bit of humor demonstrates Shyamalan's aptitude for capturing a fantastic idea and placing it in a very real setting with characters displaying very human emotions.
The twists built into the plot never fail to deliver a thrill either, despite its slow pace. When the moments of revelation arrive, there is always a frantic moment of terror that accompanies them, as in one scene in which Dunne's son threatens to shoot him to prove that nothing will happen. A climactic battle towards the end leaves Dunne lying on a tarp in the middle of a pool, and the tarp slowly begins sinking into the water. And the final surprise tops that of The Sixth Sense in my mind as one that truly catches the viewer off-guard and knocks the wind out of you.
Shyamalan as director builds onto the scaffolding the plot provides to create a truly moody and somber film. Multiple shots of images turned upside down convey that all is not right in Dunne's world, and the repeated use of dulled color and rainy landscapes set the tone of fear and held it in place for the entire film.
Willis's subtle acting and the slow-motion plot might turn off some viewers since some people might also think it is strange that Dunne is so slow to realize his abilities. (But it is easy to understand why someone who has never been sick wouldn't realize it simply because he never HAS to think about it.) And even I found the title card at the beginning of the film a tad pointless, and the one at the end almost took the energy out of that aforementioned shock ending. But those viewers who are willing to stick with it and really invest themselves in this story will not be disappointed. The suspense is thick throughout the film due to the mood writer-director Shyamalan casts over the film with his terse dialogue and dark visual imagery. It would have been difficult for him to have tried to follow up The Sixth Sense with a similar film; instead he kept the tone and took it in a different direction, one that is both riveting and alarming. If Shyamalan's career keeps moving in this direction, he will soon be counted amongst Spielberg and Hitchcock as one of the greatest directors of all time.
