Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken opens with an impressive shot that suggests we’re about to see a much better movie than the one we end up with. The camera captures a beautiful, bright orange sun and then turns slowly towards the right as we see a squad of American planes about to engage in combat. If the film had been able to constantly capture this perverse dichotomy of how the poetic can easily become tragic, it would have been absolutely remarkable. Instead it settles for being a middlebrow, unexceptional biopic, the likes of which usually collects myriad awards in Hollywood ceremonies.
Unbroken centers on the real life story of Louis Zamparini (Jack O’Connell), a former USA track star, who enlisted during WWII and was deployed to the Pacific. When his plane crashed in the middle of the ocean, he survived for almost two months drifting on a raft, only to then be captured by the Japanese who sent him to prison camps where he spent more than two years. His story of survival is impressive to say the least, and his thirst for life is inspiring, but the film telling his story seems dedicated on sanctifying him to the point where every scene he’s in seems to be showered with light from a halo.
Clearly Jolie admired her subject, but she forgets to make him human, instead settling on telling his life story through a series of vignettes that seem extracted from similarly middlebrow films like Forrest Gump and Chariots of Fire. There is not a single element in Unbroken that rings true to life, and that hasn’t been pre-packaged to the point where we feel as if we’ve already seen the film many, many times before.
O’Connell has all the makings of a true movie star, his deep gaze and expressive face containing much more emotion than the sappy dialogues he’s given (“if you can take it, you can make it”) and the physicality he brings to the part, evokes the work of some of the greatest silent film stars, which is why it’s no wonder, the film is at its best when the camera just focuses on him, and we see a torrent of emotions draw across his face, as he wonders if life is worth living under the conditions he’s in throughout most of the film.
The latter part of the film centers on the sadistic obsession one of the prison guards (Miyavi) develops on Zamparini, and while the actor playing him tries his best to infuse his cartoony villain with a sense of truth, Jolie never explores the psychological background behind this torture. We never get a sense of why this man wishes so much evil upon the other one, except other than “well, they’re war enemies”, which is a shame because one of the earlier scenes set during the 1936 Olympics, has Zamparini spot the Japanese team, which leads us to think that maybe there will be some interesting ideas explored later in the film.
The fact is that Jolie satisfies herself with populating the film with clumsy moments of prescience, corny inspirational quotes, and even finishes her film with a Coldplay song, as if our tear ducts hadn’t been violated enough. Unbroken is all about the suffering and not for a minute stops to wonder why is Zamparini's story worth telling over that of any other survivor.
