Louie Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) gets ready to run for his life in UNBROKEN
UNBROKEN (Angelina Jolie, 2014)
Opens Thursday, December 25
www.unbrokenfilm.com
Unbroken, Angelina Jolie’s second film as director (following In the Land of Blood and Honey), attempts to set itself apart from other real-life dramas right from the start; while other movies claim to be “based on a true story” or “inspired by actual events,” Unbroken boldly, and very clearly, declares itself to be “a true story.” The old-fashioned WWII movie tells the story of Louis “Louie” Zamperini, a troubled kid (first C. J. Valleroy, then Jack O’Connell) who drinks, smokes, and gets in trouble with the law until his life turns around when his brother, Pete (first John D’Leo, then Alex Russell), helps train him to become an Olympic runner. But duty calls, and Louie enlists in the air force. His plane is shot down over the Pacific Ocean, leaving him, Russell “Phil” Phillips (Anna Karenina’s Domhnall Gleeson), and Francis “Mac” McNamara (American Horror Story’s Finn Wittrock) adrift on a pair of life rafts, surrounded by sharks. Later, Zamperini is captured and taken to a POW camp run by the sadistic Mutsuhiro “the Bird” Watanabe (Japanese rock star Miyavi), who decides to make the Olympian his personal punching bag, brutalizing him every chance he gets, daring him to give up, but Zamperini isn’t about to give him the satisfaction.
Louie Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) goes through hell and back in Angelina Jolie’s WWII drama
A gripping, if overly straightforward, good vs. evil story, Unbroken is based on Laura Hillenbrand’s 2010 book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, and both Hillenbrand and Zamperini, who died earlier this year at the age of ninety-seven, served as consultants on the film. The screenplay, which leaves little room for nuance, was written by Joel and Ethan Coen, along with William Nicholson (Shadowlands, Sarafina!) and Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King, Beautiful Creatures). English actor O’Connell (Starred Up, This Is England) gives a courageous, physically harrowing performance as Zamperini, while the baby-faced Miyavi is frightening in his movie debut. Their relationship recalls elements of such films as The Hill, Papillon, The Deer Hunter, and even The Bridge on the River Kwai, although Jolie ultimately relies too much on the hero vs. villain black-and-white aspects of the story. There also might be unintended reactions to Unbroken, especially coming on the heels of the Senate’s recent release of the CIA Torture Report; while the film is a distinctly American tale of the indomitability of the human spirit and the sheer will to survive against all odds, it deals with the controversial issue of wartime torture, and near the end of the film, the man sitting next to us muttered that what the Bird did to Zamperini was much worse than anything the U.S. has ever done to any of its enemies.