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(Note: I was going to subtitle this “A Hero for the…” and insert the familiar for this decade in place of the ellipsis, but realized we have yet to arrive at a consensus about what to call it. Now that the hyperbolic appellation “of the Millennium” is soooo ‘99, we’ve got to stop mucking around and get on with things. “A Hero for the Naughts” or “…the Oh’s” or “Double-Oh’s” or “Oh-Oh’s” won’t get it. And few who survived a decade bookmarked by Scuds and Seattle flannel on one end and e-business and vacuum-defying boy/girlpop on the other will likely sit still for letting this decade get referred to as “the Pre-Teens.” So I’m open for suggestions.)
A few days before the movie reuniting Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan with star Bruce Willis came out, I read an article wherein M. said he thought _____ ____s are the greatest modern narrative art form. So I wasn’t completely surprised that he opens Unbreakable with an onscreen crawl relating several facts and figures concerning _____ ____s. But even now, well into “the Zeroes,” the term _____ ____ unfortunately continues to have a negative connotation for many people. I’m not about to take a chance on dissuading those folks from seeing one of the best movies of a year that so far seems destined for a conspicuous place in the Hall of Mediocrity by choosing the wrong words, so you’ll have to deal with the blank spaces and use your imagination.
Anyway, Willis plays David Dunne, a security guard at Temple University (Philly-raised M. continues to favor the city of his youth as a setting) who miraculously survives a horrific train crash unscathed. That much we’ve known for months from the trailers. What weren’t conveyed are the artistry with which that set-up is constructed (there’s an incredible shot of Willis seated on the train, silhouetted against a window, that alone is worth buying a ticket to see), and the riveting, atmospheric fable that follows. Dunne is going through a mid-lie crisis which, though understated, still makes most other mid-life crises look like a month in St. Croix. A vague, indefinable lack of purpose has led to in-home estrangement from his longsuffering wife (Robin Wright Penn), leaving their young son (Spencer Treat Clark, who despite the same number of names doesn’t have Haley Joel Osment’s rep, but has enjoyed a string of successes that includes Gladiator, Double Jeopardy, and Arlington Road) to mediate. The accident does little to draw them back together, until Dunne is approached by mysterious Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), whose marked genetic predisposition toward easily broken bones is the least of his oddities.
Price, a lifelong student and connoisseur of _____ ____s, is convinced that the two men may be intrinsically connected – that perhaps his frailty is the yin to the seemingly indestructible Dunne’s yang, and that fate has ordained very singular roles for each of them. Initially skeptical (with good reason, as Price is one of the spookier characters you’ll found outside Rob Zombie liner notes), Dunne gradually finds himself compelled to listen to this _____ ____-driven hypothesis, especially since he begins to feel a long-absent emotional fulfillment the more he buys into it. What follows is a quietly epic journey leading to a climax that is guaranteed to unplug your heating pad.
Some reviewers, apparently eager to jealously savage Shyamalan (who once again served as writer, producer, and director) after the unexpected, nearly unprecedented success of The Sixth Sense, describe Unbreakable as a slow, predictable, and unworthy follow-up, some taking pains to give away the entire plot. Well, I say they should all be strung up by their cheap attack-metaphors and boiled in laser-print toner. This is one of the best movies of the year, featuring memorable performances from both Willis (who hasn’t been this good since Pulp Fiction) and Jackson (who has, but then his films are almost always excellent), and an absolutely heartrending turn from Penn that works because she spends just the right amount of time onscreen. Any more and her sadness would have been overpowering; any less, and this might have been just another _____ ____ movie rather than The Best _____ ____ Movie Ever Made. Frankly, I never jumped on the 6thS bandwagon, but Unbreakable makes me realize that 1999 will long be memorable for introducing three true director’s directors whose promise could go a long way toward re-energizing a moribund industry: Shyamalan, Sam Mendes (American Beauty), and Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels), whose next film, Snatch, will get wide release in January.
Maybe there’s some late hope for the first year of “The Whatevers” after all. I give it a “wow.” A
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