Unbroken

Here is a surprisingly stiff bio-picture about heroism that manages to go nowhere fast.  Unbroken tells us the story of Louie Zamperini, a World War II fighter pilot who crashed in the middle of the Pacific, and drifted on a life raft for 47 days, before he was captured and sent to a Japanese POW camp, where he was beaten and tortured endlessly.  I can see how the filmmakers thought that this could be an uplifting movie about how the human spirit can rise above the worst circumstances, but director Angelina Jolie and the film's screenplay (credited to the Coen Brothers, of all people) miss the point completely.

Rather than uplifting, the movie plays out as an endless series of suffering done to a lead character that we have little to no personal investment with.  That's because the movie forgets to tell us anything about Louie Zamperini (played here by Jack O'Connell).  There's little character development, and really no time for us to feel anything for him, because the movie is so completely focused on what he went through, and not on what he did to endure it.  You know how people accuse some horror movies of being "torture porn"?  Well, this is a torture porn of a different sort, one that's been made with good intentions and dreams of winning award recognition.  To be fair, Jolie handles the early aircraft battle scenes quite well.  It's the smaller and personal moments of the film where she fumbles.

Zamperini is portrayed as a hero with an unbreakable spirit and conviction.  But how did he get this way?  The movie offers us some flashbacks to his youth, but they don't really provide any answers.  As a child, he was viewed as a thug in his community, causing trouble and starting fights.  A police officer catches up to him, and tells him "If it weren't for the fact that your family is so respected in this town, you'd be in Juvenile Hall by now!".  Again, why is his family respected?  We learn absolutely nothing about them.  Louie seems destined for a life of trouble, until his older brother (John D'Leo) gives him a rousing pep talk that is built out of the corniest of cliches. (Again, the Coen Brothers had a hand in this script?) The talk is enough to turn Louie's life around, and he joins the school's track team.  He starts breaking records, and pretty soon it looks like he has a shot at competing in the Olympics.  But, for reasons that the movie doesn't even bother to tell us, he decides to quit his career as an athlete and become a bomber pilot when World War II breaks out.

I probably wouldn't mind the fact that the movie tells us so little about the guy if Louie came across as an interesting individual, but he doesn't.  He's portrayed as a stoic whitewashed hero figure who can do no wrong once he gets on the right path, and the performance by O'Connell offers nothing that we can grasp onto in terms of character traits.  After Zamperini's plane crashes, he spends those long 47 days at sea with a pair of surviving teammates (Finn Wittrock from American Horror Story and Domhnall Gleeson).  This sequence at sea comes across as an endurance test for both the characters and the audience, as the whole movie grinds to a halt to the point that it feels like it lasts just as long as it did in real time.  The only thing interesting in these scenes is the fact that Louie's facial hair grows into a specifically trimmed beard during his long days at sea.

Once Unbroken hits the Japanese prison camp, the narrative becomes even more plodding.  The lead Commandant of the camp (Takamasa Ishihara) takes a personal interest in making Louie's life a living hell, putting him through grueling tortures, such as forcing him to be punched in the face by each of his fellow prisoners, or having to lift a heavy board over his head and keep it there, or else he will be shot.  Again, we learn nothing about these men, so the scenes have absolutely no impact whatsoever.  We know nothing about Louie, about his fellow prisoners, or the men who are torturing them.  This makes the movie unintentionally hollow and empty.  I wanted to be rooting for this guy to survive, but the way the film has been written, I found that I could care less.  It kind of made me feel bad that I didn't care about this guy or what was happening, but I simply can't excuse this bad screenplay.

The film's final moments inform us that Louie spent his later years of life seeking out the men who tortured him in the camp, and forgiving them for what they did.  There was a movie from earlier this year called The Railway Man which covered a very similar topic, and did it very well.  That movie came across as an emotional experience, both in what the main character went through in the prison camp, and his efforts to track down his former torturer.  Unbroken could have learned a lot of lessons from it.

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