Review of Unbroken (2014) by Alvin Y — 21 Jan 2015

Unbroken is one of the films that made me feel uninspired rather than taught a lesson about sacrifice and forgiveness. This is a project that for sure would've been done well by a different director, I'm thinking maybe Clint Eastwood or Steven Spielberg, or other underrated directors like Edward Zwick. Angelina Jolie has never realize about what is she trying to accomplish here, is it what we feel after seeing Louie getting beat up by the Japanese and then going back home, or probably how truly Unbroken this character is? To carefully examine this film again is not a good option, maybe the book which this story is inspired would be a good read than this. The very biggest problem of the film is the lack of emotion and lack of dream to live to see the day, instead we painfully see for the most of the time Louie in the POW camp and unlike most other great American war films with themes like this, the character(s) believe they will make it to the real world, then what we see here. Even at the early scenes in Louie's early days, I never had the thought of him becoming somebody or him having to be inspired by a figure at all. Another big question here is how in the world did he ever get into the military, no explanation and no characteristic of him to be a fighter or a warrior, sure he can run but did he really want to be a runner, in an early scene, his brother told him you can who you are, but really, after all that I've been through for 2+ hours of this story, what did I learned. Despite to all that complaints, I did however admire some of the scenes where they were shooting other Japanese planes at the air and also how the movie shows the transformation of Louie as he stranded on the ocean for a month and it combines well with a dramatic score at the same time that he's getting beat up.

Again, Unbroken truly feels Broken to me, it's a shame that I had hopes and expectations to this but instead it left me nothing and what is to tell more about his life now that he's dead. Sure Jolie will have more films in the future as a director that will sometime give him the best director award as well as best motion picture.