Review of Unbreakable (2000) by Matthew L — 20 Aug 2018

M. Night Shyamalan turns in a unique spin on the superhero genre in this film by crafting a masterful story of an average security guard discovering his super powers and becoming a superhero that would normally take at most half an hour in an average superhero flick.

However, despite this great concept and masterful screenplay (along with some very creative cinematography), the movie still feels stale, especially when held up to the modern superhero origin story classics such as Batman Begins and Iron Man.

This is not because of the movies lack of a true antagonist (in the traditional sense) or its lack of constant action as some would assume. On the contrary these points are what make unbreakable unique and stand out among the crowd from other superhero movies since Shyamalan is basically taking one scene from every superhero movie and stretching that into its own drama.

But the thing that keeps Unbreakable from being one of the all time great superhero films is that since this is a stretching out of one scene essentially, the pacing of the movie is consistently slow.

The film does pick up its pace when our two main characters meet, but most of the scenes still feel like they're being pulled. Sometimes this is effective for emotional effect, and other times Samuel L.

Jackson propels a scene forward with his spectacular performance. However, as a whole this film is slow. The scenes are slow. The story is slow. The dialogue is even slow. And maybe some people may claim this is a strength, but for me this keeps the movie from having that sense of intrigue that would have propelled this movie to become a unique classic.