M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable

Recently, I revisited the movie Unbreakable (2000, M. Night Shyamalan). The movie is centered around David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Elijah Price aka Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson). M. Night Shyamalan is not my favorite director due to some of his poorly executed works (ex. Devil) but some of his movies, such as The Sixth Sense (1999) and Signs (2002), are my favorite films. Samuel L. Jackson hasn't exactly been in the best movies but when he is in a well directed and well written movie, he does an amazing job (ex. Pulp Fiction). Bruce Willis has been in multiple movies that include Samuel L. Jackson but he is also an actor that seems to waste his talent in nonsensical blockbusters that include corny one liners and gratuitous explosions. Unbreakable highlights Willis's and Jackson's talents and is unlike any super hero movie I've ever seen.

The movie starts by showing the unusual birth of Mr. Glass, followed by the title sequence, and then shows Bruce Willis in a train. He removes his wedding ring as an attractive woman sits  in the open seat next to him, indicating that his relationship with his wife is disintegrating. He tries to seduce her but he says all the wrong things and she moves to another seat. The train starts to make strange noises and speed up and the scene cuts abruptly indicating a crash. The first shot is a one shot sequence and is about ten minutes long. The next shot is of Willis in the hospital and the doctor explains that he was the only one to survive on the entire train and walked away with no injuries at all. Willis leaves the hospital and passes all the families in the hospital mourning their lost ones. This sequence is one of my favorite shots ever.



The movie is about David Dunn (Willis) being indestructible and having super strength and Mr. Glass (Jackson) is extremely fragile and breaks bones often. Mr. Glass works in a comic gallery and when he hears about David Dunn surviving the train wreck, he finds him and explains that he believes he is a superhero. Dunn denies it and thinks that Mr. Glass is a freak. Dunn has the ability to sense what people have done wrong in the past by touching them and is able to bench press upwards of 600 pounds. He looks into his past and discovers that he was the only one to survive a car accident, a fire, a plane explosion, and has never been sick. The only incident where Dunn almost died is when he nearly drowned in a lake as a child. Dunn ends up saving a family from a murderer but almost dies when the murderer pushes him into the pool (water is his only weakness). Jackson's character is obsessed with Willis's. At the end of the movie, the audience learns that Mr. Glass (Jackson) has been following David Dunn (Willis) for his entire life and caused all the catastrophes to prove that David Dunn is truly "unbreakable."

Many shots in the film are long one shot scenes. Shyamalan also includes many indirect reflection shots such as a long shot pointed at a TV that shows the reflection of the characters in the room. Shyamalan also idolizes Alfred Hitchcock and pays homage to him by making a short appearance on screen. In Unbreakable, he plays a man that is suspected of selling drugs and says only three lines to Willis's character.

Unbreakable is by no means a traditional superhero movie and each character is unique and well developed. Shyamalan's cinematography is exceptional and unique and it is obvious, through each shot sequence, that he idolizes Hitchcock's style. There is no ridiculous action scenes and it focuses on the personal life of an unlikely superhero. Watch Unbreakable.

-Matthew Hadley