Unbreakable **** (2000, Bruce Willis, Samuel L Jackson, Robin Wright) – Classic Movie Review 917

Bruce Willis re-unites in 2000 with his Die Hard With a Vengeance co-star Samuel L Jackson and his Sixth Sense director M Night Shyamalan for another unique suspense thriller that proves a worthy successor to Shyamalan’s first hit.

Willis plays David Dunn, the only survivor of an appalling train crash that killed 131 people though he doesn’t have a scratch on him. But then he’s been born ‘unbreakable’. Jackson, on the other hand, is a man who breaks like glass. He approaches Dunn, and offers him his seemingly far-fetched theory to explain it all. ‘We’re connected, you and I,’ says Jackson (as Elijah Price) to Willis. ‘We’re opposite ends of the same curve.’ But what does he mean? In fact, what does it all mean?

With a really clever screenplay by Shyamalan, this is a beautifully crafted, smart-looking, intelligent movie that stretches the actors as well as the audience, and substitutes ideas for clichés. Way out of the rut for a Hollywood blockbuster, Unbreakable isn’t quite smashing, but it comes near enough. Willis and Jackson are unmissable here. It’s a big-budget movie ($75million) with the budget showing all up there on screen in a polished result.

Shyamalan was on a roll at the time: his next is Signs in 2002.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 917

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