Unbroken (2014)

Absolutely brilliant

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This is based on the true story of Olympic Gold Medalist Louie Zamperini (Jack O'Connell) and his internment in a Japanese POW camp. As a POW war film, it wasn't as good as many of the fictional offerings. The intent of the film was to be inspirational. Louie lived by the motto, "If I can take it, I can make it," not my first choice for a life motto. Apparently it is his spirit that was "Unbroken" as they broke his body and damaged his mind. He was held captive by "The Bird" (Takamasa Ishihara) a man who talked to Louie like a dysfunctional lover saying, "Don't look at me." to the point nausea.At one point the troops are moved and as a bombardier, Louie had to personally see the damaged his kind caused, but there was no emotional, "what have we done" scene. In fact at the end, he credits his faith as carrying him through his internment and surviving enhanced interrogation techniques, yet we see minimal evidence of that while he was imprisoned.It is a film that fails to convey the message that was in the book, except as a post script. At one point I had a Mel Brooks moment and thought what a great musical this could be using the songs, R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and "Working in a Coal Mine." My bad. This was a limited inspirational adaptation.Guide: No f-bombs, or sex. Male rear nudity.

The timeless contract between director and cinema-goer is to make us care about the movie, to change our thinking in some way, to transport us, to make our lives better. Unbroken does none of these. In some ways, it is similar to Scorsese's Silence, which is two hours of unremitting medieval torture, or Iñárritu's Revenant, which was diCaprio grunting through snow for 2+ hours.Jolie's Unbroken is a litany of Japanese cruelty and brutality. Up to a certain point, it shows how realistic WWII POW camps were, but this is not a documentary but a movie. It is meant, according to the unspoken contract mentioned above, to take the viewer on a journey, make him care about a character, see a character grow (even despite tremendous adversity), and give the viewer some kind of emotional cathartic satisfaction at the end.In Unbroken, though, Jolie minimalises any character growth in a rather spartan "show the viewers and let them figure out what is going on" methodology. As a result, Zamperini, our lead character, simply exists from one scene to the next. He does not show any emotional growth arc whatsoever. He simply takes all the multifarious beatings his captors give him as though that were enough. Ms Jolie, it is NOT. We need to see a character move as an active participant in the story, as a maker of events, not a passive recipient. To put it bluntly, here is the storyline (spoiler alert.)Zamperini gets captured. He gets beaten often and mistreated. The End. Sure there is a brief storyboard at the conclusion of the movie which fleshed out the character a little, but it is NOT ENOUGH. I suspect that Ms Jolie believed that the various scenes that she so treasured would trigger the same emotional responses in her audience as her, a sadly mistaken belief. Towards the end of the movie, I was badly needing Zamperini to DO something instead of just accept further beatings. We saw NOTHING of his internal journey, NOTHING of any form of resistance, NOTHING but an endless series of beatings and Watanabe, his tormentor, saying the same things over and over and beating him without any point at all.The end, when it came, was a glorious relief, and I say that in a negative sense. Count this a failure, Ms Jolie. Do better next time, if there is a next time.

This movie is very fantastic thanks for the great performance of Jack O'Connell and Domhnall Gleeson. the writers wrote this movie in very fantastic way that make you cant stand up from your seat for any reason and the director make this movie a real wonderful one. I cant believe this story was real.

This is based on a true story but it gets boring when they are being filmed stranded in the ocean for half an hour. In addition, its repetitious to watch Zamperini get punched by the general. The film has great actors but lacked so much potential to be good. I think overall this could benefit from a refilm, so I give this a 6.Rating: D-