When
Unbreakable begins, titles tells us how many
comic books are sold daily, and how much time enthusiasts
spend reading comic books in their lifetime. During the first
segment, we witness a physician who is attending to the birth
of Elijah Price, an African American child, in a Philadelphia
department store in 1961; the baby’s arms and legs are broken
at birth, indicating a genetic disease called osteogenesis
imperfecta. Next, David Dunn (played by Bruce Willis) is returning
from a job interview as security guard on a train from New
York to Philadelphia, presumably in the year 2000. The train
derails. Dunn, the only survivor, emerges from the wreck without
a scratch. To his son Jeremy (played by Spencer Treat Clark),
Dunn is a hero, though he has a college degree and only works
as a security guard at Temple University. Price (played by
Samuel L. Jackson), now 39 years old, has been saving newspaper
clippings about disasters that cause many deaths, so he assumes
that Dunn could survive only if he had supernatural powers.
Accordingly, Price places a note on Dunn’s car one day, asking
him how many days in his life he was ill. Dunn had not thought
about the fact that he never got sick, though he nearly died
at a young age when some boys pushed him into a swimming pool,
and he emerged from an auto accident with some need for physical
therapy. Nevertheless, he goes to the business indicated on
the envelope of the note, which turns out to be an art gallery
for classic comic drawings operated by Price. Then Price and
Jeremy prod Dunn to come to terms with his special powers.
One evening Price tells Dunn to "go where people are," so
he goes to the Philadelphia train station, where he spots
a janitor, and is impelled to follow him to a house, and soon
Dunn rescues three women in a house who are being terrorized
by the janitor. Aware of his supernatural powers for the first
time, he attends a public exhibition of the comic book drawings
to again meet Price, who congratulates Dunn for a self-discovery
that will give his life meaning from then on. After yet another
enigmatic dialog, the film ends, and titles tells us that
Dunn later exposed Price as the perpetrator of three acts
of terrorism. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, Unbreakable,
in short, has mysteries, surprises, revelations about supernatural
powers, but is an "I see bad people" variation on his hit
The Sixth Sense
(1999). Many filmviewers will feel cheated that they have
invested money to see a movie that is full of pretense and
merely says that they have the power for good or evil if they
can discover their own hidden talents and purpose for their
life. MH
I
want to comment on this film
