unbreakable
a lot of people i asked, didn't expressed a liking for this movie. they remarked that it was too slow, dead slow. perhaps it's the fact that bruce willis was extremely toned down, which does not mean underused, but not a maniac whose illusion of grandiose is to save the world. samuel l. jackson is spectacular as elijah price, hands down.
i like shyamalan's idea of debunking the myth of superheros. comics are not complete without them, but we could never recognised one in real life. nobody flies around in red underware to save maidens in trouble, nor do we see any one climbing walls and towers sticky webs of a spider. in comics, for this to happen, several elements need to exist:
1. a catasthrophe
2. the effect of the catasthrope and why one must prevent its reoccurance
3. a superhero, the person who would prevent the catasthrope
4. a fantastic ability, in which all superhero got to have one
5. a villain, all out to defeat the superhero, sometimes a motivation is not even needed, because we are allowed to assume that the villain is evil
enter david dunn, a security guard who used to be a college star footballer, now a married father with a little boy. he was never sick as far as he could remember, but that is not his special ability. on the far end of the universe is elijah price, who spends his childhood on the bed due to a rare bone disease that makes him susceptible to multiple bone fractures and breakages. dunn recently survived a train crash in which he was the sole survivor.
the similarity the two shared is that both desperately need something to believe in. price was disillusioned with the disease he was forced to live with, and dunn regretted his decision to give up football for a marriage to the woman he loves, only now he is not sure if football is worth giving up in the light of his troubled marriage.
the dynamics between dunn and price gives us a an insight of what the universe of superheros and villains colourfully painted in comics is consist of, and it is infallibly human. i won't give away the story, but it is definitely a good piece of cinema. i personally think it is shyamalan's best work.
oh, the soundtrack is something the story can not be complete without.
