Review of Unbroken (2014) by Dawdlingpoet — 24 Nov 2021

This is a biographical historical drama and it features themes including survival, training and imprisonment. Another key term I'd use is endurance. Its a somewhat apt film, in as much as it depicts a son of an immigrant family, who had a relatively tough time growing up and wanted to prove his worth and talent. The film opens with a scene depicting planes firing at one another, i.e. an air battle, above the sea, although as a viewer it's rather unclear what's going on as its a bit long-winded and we haven't been introduced to Louis yet. I felt it did well at portraying Louis struggles the highs and obviously lows of his situations.

I found it a little frustrating how it seemed to cut between different times in Louis life, chronologically speaking. There are scenes of him running, training for the Olympics etc. and scenes of people trying to trace his crashed plane in the ocean. The film is fairly long at 2 hours and 17 minutes running time (or thereabouts) and I felt that some scenes were perhaps a bit unnecessarily long-winded, although I wouldn't say it ruined the film for me as such. Some scenes I found quite gripping, with good use of cinematography such as when the plane crash lands, seeing the descent as if looking from within the plane towards the ocean itself, I almost wanted to look away as it did seem quite scary for some moments - understandably so! if anything, it was a little disorientating and may not be great for anyone who suffers from motion sickness. The fact it's based on a true story made it all the more intriguing for me, as I like to watch some films about peoples lives, to try and get an idea of how things were in the past, although I knew this would be a (for the most part) rather unsettling and grisly/harrowing watch, as I knew before seeing it, that Louis ended up a prisoner of war. The fact that this was/is Angelina Jolie's directorial debut, that piqued my interest enough to want to give it a watch. I found it relatively engrossing, the desperation of the crew while stuck on a dinghy at sea seeming very realistic and compelling somehow. Content-wise, the film contains many instances of moderate violence, including bloody violence. Of course, due to the plot, torture plays a part and it is often quite grim to watch. There are also scenes of partial nudity and characters are shown clearly partly emaciated, skinny and with their ribcages partly visible. There is the occasional use of moderately strong language and fairly obviously derogatory terms used regarding Americans, the Japanese etc. The film is generally quite grim and thus may be a tough watch. It's fairly depressing in tone at times, so it certainly won't appeal to all. The film has been given a 15 rating in light of this.

I felt that, if anything, it may have been better if we'd had more insight into Louis upbringing, more scenes of his issues during his childhood and the like. I definitely did feel sorry for him but in a way, I felt that perhaps we didn't quite know enough about him personally to feel as emotionally attached to, or worried about, him as we might be. Having said that, the film has quite a long-running time as it is (no pun intended, given his talent at running!).

As far as the accuracy of the plot, or the film in general, is concerned (given it claims to be based on a true story) I can't be sure of quite how accurate it is. Its an adaptation of a non-fiction book written by Laura Hillenbrand back in 2010. The film screenplay was written by the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan Coen, plus Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson. There are always complaints from people about such historical, war-related films coming out of America being somewhat biased to America, although this film is far more centred in on the brutality of Japanese people running prisoner of war (POW) camps. Obviously I've no experience of this or ability to comment either way about it but I imagine that both nations have done quite grim things at times, so I suppose that's all I can say really.

Would I recommend it? Overall, yes I probably would recommend this. I don't think I'd say its one of the best war-related films of all time or anything like that and I do feel that the main character needed a bit of extra development somehow but I did find it pretty engrossing and atmospheric.