Unbreakable

Dir: M. Night Shyamalan

2000

*****

It is now easy to forget M. Night Shyamalan’s brilliant 2000 film Unbreakable as a superhero film, after Marvel and DC have both battled it out and made some of the most amazing superhero films of all time. The truth is though, that Unbreakable is still one of the most original, faithful and authentic superhero films of all time. When Shyamalan conceived the idea for Unbreakable, the outline had a comic book's traditional three-part structure: the superhero's birth/ his struggles against general evil-doers/the hero's ultimate battle against the archenemy. Finding the birth section most interesting, he decided to write Unbreakable as an origin story. The director has repeated the fact that this film remains the favourite of his own. The story begins in Philadelphia in 1961. Young Elijah Price is born with Type I osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare disease that renders sufferers' bones extremely fragile and prone to fracture. Growing up is hard for Elijah, his bones continue to break regularly which ostrasizes him from his classmates. His mother, his only parent, becomes determined not to let his condition hold him back and gives him a comic book full of superheros to inspire him to become something greater. Elijah (Samual L. Jackson) excels and grows up to become a wealthy comic-book art dealer, and develops a theory, based on the comics he has read during his many hospital stays, that if he represents extreme human frailty, there must be someone "unbreakable" at the opposite extreme.In the present day, another Philadelphia man, security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis), is also searching for meaning in his life. He had given up a promising American football career during his college days to marry Audrey after they were involved in car accident. Now, however, their marriage is dissolving, to the distress of their young son Joseph. As he returns home from a job interview in New York City, David's train, the Eastrail 177, crashes, killing the other 131 passengers. He is the only survivor, sustaining no injuries. At the crash victims' memorial service, he finds an envelope on his car's windshield, with a card inside bearing the logo of Elijah's art gallery, Limited Edition, that asks if he has ever been ill. David and Joseph meet with Elijah, who proposes to David that he is the kind of person after whom comic book superheroes are modeled and repeatedly pursues the issue with David and Audrey, trying to learn whether or not David has ever been ill or injured. Although Elijah unsettles him, David begins testing himself. While lifting weights with Joseph watching, he bench presses about 350 pounds, well above what he could do before. Joseph begins to idolize his father and believe that he is a superhero, although David still maintains that he is just an ordinary man. David challenges Elijah's theory with an incident from his childhood when he almost drowned. Elijah suggests that the incident highlights the common convention whereby superheroes often have a weakness. He contends that David's weakness might be water: it is easier for him to drown or choke than regular people. While surveying the stored wreckage of the train crash that he survived, David recalls the car accident that ended his athletics career, remembering that he was unharmed and ripped a door off the car in order to save Audrey. David used the accident as an excuse to quit football because Audrey did not like the violence of the sport. Under Elijah's influence, David realizes that what he thought was just a natural instinct for picking out dangerous people during security checks is actually a form of extrasensory perception. Now consciously honing this ability, David discovers that when he comes into touch contact with other people, he is able to glimpse criminal acts they have committed. At Elijah's suggestion, David stands in the middle of a crowd in Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. As various people bump into him, he senses the crimes they perpetrated, such as theft, assault, and rape, and finds one he can act on: a sadistic janitor who has invaded a family home, killed the father, and is now holding the wife and their two children captive. David follows the janitor to the victims' house, frees the children, and finds their mother, but the janitor ambushes him and pushes him off a balcony into a swimming pool. David nearly drowns since he cannot swim, but the children rescue him. He then attacks the janitor from behind and strangles him to death, while he remains uninjured, but discovers the mother is already dead. That night, he and Audrey reconcile. The following morning, he secretly shows Joseph a newspaper article on the anonymous heroic act, featuring a sketch of David in the hooded rain poncho he wore while confronting the janitor. Joseph recognizes the hero as his father and promises to keep his secret. David attends an exhibition at Limited Edition and meets Elijah's mother, who explains the difference between villains who fight heroes with physical strength versus those who use their intelligence. Elijah brings David to the back room of his studio, extends his hand, and asks David to shake it. Upon doing so, David sees visions of Elijah orchestrating several terrorist disasters, including David's recent train accident, causing hundreds of deaths. David is horrified, but Elijah insists the deaths were justified as a means to find him. Calling himself "Mr. Glass", a nickname children had used to taunt him with when he was growing up, he explains that he now realizes his own purpose in life: To be the villain to David's hero. David walks away in horror and disgust. It is revealed that David eventually reported Elijah's actions to the police, with the result being Elijah convicted of murder and terrorism, and committed to a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. After The Sixth Sense and now Unbreakable, Shyamalan became famous for his twist endings but of all his films this one was a little different. I didn’t see it coming and it was a shock but it worked beautifully within the superhero origins idea. You don’t need to know a lot about superhero comics to understand the idea that ‘Good cannot exist without evil and evil cannot exist without good’ as is said at the end of the film. It’s perfect. It’s Batman vs The Joker and Superman vs Lex Luther but without either of them being super wealthy, an alien or dressed as an animal. They are subtly colour coded and have many comic references surrounding them but essentially this is a superhero fantasy that feels about as real as it can. The first of its kind. Shyamalan always had Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson in mind for the lead characters – Willis he approached during the filming of Sixth Sense and Willis actually mentioned it to Jackson when he met him at a Vegas casino while the both of them were on separate holidays. After the success of Sixth Sense Disney where happy to produce and thanks to its success Shyamalan was able to establish his own production company, Blinding Edge Pictures. He rather cleverly retained the rights to the story, meaning that any sequel would have to be made by himself. It seems strange that no one had had the idea before, as it was so simple and superhero movies were in dire need of an update at the time. There were a couple of great films made towards the end of the 90s but all in all the action/thriller genre needed something new. Unbreakable was a hell of a film to begin the new decade, indeed, millennium. Thanks to Marvel, we now have a million new superhero films but even with so many to choose from, Unbreakable is still quite remarkable and still ahead of its time. The only other film I can think of that tries a similar tactic is 2012’s Chronicle, written and directed by Josh Trank, but even then that film descends into superhero nonsense, loosing the authentic and realistic origins format. Unbreakable is, perhaps, untouchable.