Unbroken **** (2014, Jack O’Connell, Takamasa Ishihara, Domhnall Gleeson, Garrett Hedlund, Luke Treadaway, Jai Courtney, Finn Wittrock) – Movie Review

Unbroken is a gruelling, harrowing and upsetting true-life story of unimaginably appalling wartime suffering. But the film is brilliantly done and another feather in the cap of our little marvel Jack O’Connell.

O’Connell hits the big time as real-life Thirties Olympic runner Louis Zamperini, who enlists in World War Two, has a near-fatal plane crash in and spends a gruesome 47 days in a raft with two fellow crewmen before he’s caught by the Japanese navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp where he is horrendously tortured for two years till the war ends.

Angelina Jolie‘s second film as director is commendably made, a work of great, convincing craftsmanship. Its tale of heroic suffering is hard to bear, but as a movie it is infinitely superior to the similar The Railway Man (2013). It even evokes the memory of David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai, it is nearly that good.

O’Connell is stupendous (if alas not very Italian American), and Domhnall Gleeson does well too as one of his raft co-survivors, Russell Allen ‘Phil’ Phillips. Takamasa Ishihara is very creepy indeed as Mutsushiro Watanabe, though the film’s anti-Japanese stance is at odds with its message of forgiveness.

Unbroken is so distressingly harrowing that you want to turn away from it, but it is also incredibly inspiring and moving as a survival story.

The excellent Garrett Hedlund (Fitzgerald), Luke Treadaway (Miller) and Jai Courtney (Cup) are all wasted in slim roles, but Finn Wittrock makes the most of a good role as Francis ‘Mac’ McNamara.

Unbroken opened on Christmas Day in America, to take $31.7 million, just beating Into the Woods‘ $31 million, making it score the third largest Christmas Day opening gross in history.

Unbroken’s serious subject matter, artistic achievement and box-office success should have put it in contention for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nominations but it only had three award nominations, including one for cinematographer Roger Deakins. And it won none.

It won the 2015 AFI Award for Movie of the Year. They said: ‘Unbroken stands tall as a monument to the American ideal embodied by Louis Zamperini. Based on the book by Laura Hillenbrand, this miraculous story of survival, resilience and redemption soars to the screen under the sure hand of director Angelina Jolie, whose classic style celebrates the timeless nature of its tale. Jack O’Connell’s courageous performance of this Olympian turned World War II hero earns every ounce of respect due Zamperini, who forged a lifetime of glory by proving that if we can take it, we can make it.’

It was the winner of the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Award for The Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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