UNBROKEN
Starring Jack O’Connell, Takamasa Ishihara
Directed by Angelina Jolie
“If a story doesn’t give you a hard-on in the first couple of scenes, throw it in the goddamned garbage,” opined Samuel Fuller, one of the few makers of war films who also actually served on the front lines during WWII.
Odds are, the spectacularly staged opening of Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken would’ve had Sam at full mast. In it, we’re imbedded with real-life war hero Louis Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) – an Olympic runner who became an Air Force bombardier – as his bomber is locked in aerial combat with Japanese Zero fighters that’s balletic and brutal in turns.
As his luck sours, he finds himself trapped on a life raft targeted by sharks for almost 50 days before being interned in a prisoner-of-war camp presided over by an oddly effete sadist (Takamasa Ishihara).
Given that Jolie’s rise to superstardom came courtesy of adaptations of video games (the Tomb Raider films) and comics (Wanted), as well as other cartoonish action fare (Mr. & Mrs. Smith), it’s commendable that the UN Peace Ambassador now fancies herself a director who strips violence of any escapism. However, she seems to believe that dutifully cataloguing the seemingly endless degradations inflicted on Zamperini in graphic detail absolves her of her basic obligations as a storyteller.
Ultimately, Unbroken falls well short of Fuller’s standard for a “good yarn,” churning out scenes but rarely establishing any narrative ebb and flow. In the process, Jolie leaves O’Connell – who’s capable of almost elemental intensity – adrift, asking only that he endure. Alas, acts of resiliency alone reveal little about a character and involving drama hinges on far more than just making it out alive.
