Unbroken Movie Review

"If you can take it, you can make it."

-Pete Zamperini

Unbroken was simply a good film. It wasn't great and it surly wasn't bad either. I was more curious than anything going into this film because of it's director, Angelina Jolie. Considering her lack of directorial experience I was skeptical as to how the film was going to turn out. From the start I'd like to say that the true story of Louis Zamperini is an incredible one. It is an unbelievable story of the human will to survive and it definitely had the potential to be something great. Quite frankly his story alone serves a better story than this film did, nonetheless let's delve into the film itself.

Jack O'Connell was cast for the lead role of Louis Zamperini. I've seen over a dozen hours of his work from the hit UK series Skins, so I looked forward to seeing him take on this large role. This amazing story introduces us to Louis as a bombardier in American bomber plane. It's a beautiful and intense intro that also lays out how the rest of the story is going to be told and that is between present time and flashbacks. We are then introduced to young Louis, a trouble-maker from an Italian immigrant family. After many encounters with the law, his older brother Pete, played by Alex Russell, straightens him out and encourages him to start running track with him in school. There were a fair amount of cliches in this film, one of them being you can do whatever you put your mind to, played out in the cheesy way a lot of films tend to do. Anyway, Louis was a natural at running and practiced his whole adolescent life up until he made it to the Olympics. He made his family and country proud and it was a feel-good part of the film, until World War 2 came around.

I really liked the relationship between Louis and Pete and the actors made it feel very genuine. When Louis is deployed there is heart-warming scene as they say their goodbyes that gives the audience some insight into both characters. Fast-forward some and Louis is on a rescue mission that goes terribly wrong. He and a few others survive the plane crash in the middle of the ocean but now must really fight to survive. One of my complaints of the film is it's length. I have no problem sitting through a movie pushing 140 minutes but I don't enjoy sitting through fluff either. Jolie could have told this story in under 2 hours and still have gotten the message across just fine. In my opinion, while there were some good scenes of them afloat for weeks, it took up too big a portion of the film. When Louis is finally taken prisoner by the Japanese I was relieved, even though I knew it wasn't good news for him. I was just glad to be moving on in the story.

Once Louis becomes a POW is when the movie begins to really intensify but also get a but repetitive. The brutality that he suffered at the hands of the Japanese soldiers was immense and more then I think I could ever handle. The title Unbroken fits the story very well that's for sure. The only other character of real notable mention is "The Bird" Watanabe played by Takamasa Ishihara. He was the cruelest officer of all who seemed to follow Louis with pain and suffering wherever he went. The relationship between these two was actually very interesting and was one of my favorite parts about the film. This movie doesn't have much of a cast to boast about but the performances were very solid. I really appreciate and admire this incredible story I just think the film could have taken some more risks and could have used some serious trimming. All in all it was a decent film that defintley evokes human emotion at the most basic levels and makes you feel for the character portrayed. I give Unbroken a 6.5 out of 10.