Unbreakable (2000)

They alive, dammit! It's a miracle!

Unbreakable plays different in 2023 than it did in 2000. Superhero movies have become a commercial and cultural juggernaut in the 23 years since Unbreakable debuted. Of course, superhero movies already existed at the turn of the millennium. They had been occasional money-makers for decades already for big names like Donner’s Superman and Burton’s Batman. But you surely don’t need me to explain to you that comic books were viewed differently two decades ago, before Iron Man, before The Dark Knight, before even Singer’s X-Men and Raimi’s Spider-Man: The pulpy stories were realm of the power-fantasies for basement dwellers. Superhero movies of any intellectual depth or artistic bravery in cinema were uncommon. Not so nowadays: superheroes are oversaturated; they fill out every content corner of streamers. The realm of the geek has become the billion-dollar business of the biggest film studios in Hollywood.

You’d think this might harm Unbreakable in retrospect. Somehow, the opposite is true. In spite of the saturation of comic book cinema, Unbreakable feels fresh and bold; perhaps even moreso than at its debut. It stands in stark contrast to the superheroes we see everywhere else: It has no franchise signifers in sight, no cinematic universe suggested (though one was later created), no 9-digit-budget spectacle or big chase scenes. Unbreakable simply uses superheroes as a beautiful storytelling device; much like Sixth Sense was not a typical horror movie but used ghost stories as a beautiful storytelling device.

As an M. Night Shyamalan film, Unbreakable expands on the sincere but thrilling tone of The Sixth Sense, this time with a bit more ambivalence about embracing the unknown. Shyamalan once again portrays a fascination with the supernatural as a reflection of basic human truths and experiences. We see this through two men: David Dunn (Bruce Willis), a physically impervious but psychically drained man with a failing personal life and an uneasy approach to fatherhood. Then there’s his inverse image, the physically fragile but obsessively motivated Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson).

The narrative follows Dunn’s struggle to embrace his own superpowers (invulnerability, intuition) after a miraculous survival of a train crash. His mental state serves as a metaphor: a melancholic, everyday father expected to be a hyper-aware Superman for his family, and finding it hard to do so. Just as there was a thrill in watching Haley Joel Osment’s Cole embrace his gift for communing with the dead in The Sixth Sense, so there’s a fulfillment in Dunn slowly emerging from his ennui (which borders on depression). Dunn engages more with his surroundings and tests the extent of his abilities; he embraces his fatherhood and his own responsibility to steward both his family and the world surrounding him. And as he accepts both this truth and his own powers, he becomes a savior.

Jackson’s character Price is equally complex and compelling: He’s a man tormented by his own limitations, yearning for escape by discovering someone who can break the physical constraints that Price is forever bound by. And true to Shyamalan’s style, the final few minutes brilliantly recast this character into something more ominous, serving as a reminder that obsession with abstract “greatness” is not an intrinsically positive pursuit.

Shyamalan excels in his direction, framing the story with intensity and precision. The visuals are filled with long, probing takes that draw us into the characters’ mindset. The story is paced deliberately. Another superhero movie might cover the entirety of Unbreakable’s narrative in its first act. The extended length of specific shots and scenes use visual language to deepen the portraits of Price and Dunn. In some ways the sharp focus on characters it makes the film smaller in narrative scope, but it comes with much deeper psychological depth: Any additional world-building or expanded adventure would have undermined what makes Unbreakable truly special: its focus on its characters and its patience investigating them. (It’s for this reason that I approach watching more ambitious Glass and Split, follow-ups to this, with some trepidation.)

The film’s performances are superb. Willis and Jackson carry the film, and Robin Wright brings life to a simple character, Dunn’s estranged wife, Audrey. Her performance reminds me of Toni Collette in The Sixth Sense, greatly elevating a maternal role that could easily have been shallow or forgettable. This is also the third consecutive film by the director featuring an impressive performance by a young actor, in this case Spencer Treat Clark as Joseph, Dunn’s adoring son.

As a superhero movie-proper, it’s relatively sparse on what we think of as defining the genre. But then, Unbreakable isn’t really a superhero movie-proper, is it? In texture it is something different, the super powers a heightening and exaggeration of the psychodrama of its characters, pitched at a decidedly low-spectacle tenor. Tim Burton’s Batman had proven the commercial appeal of the genre a decade earlier, and Sam Raimi’s excellent Spider-Man would establish the blueprint for the 21st superhero movie just a couple of years later, but Unbreakable feels like the Plymouth Rock for more cerebral superhero fare: The prototype for the thematic and literary expansion the medium would undergo in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.

Indeed, Unbreakable is a unique and engaging miracle of the genre. It’s a bit more idiosyncratic than The Sixth Sense, but it’s nearly as great.

Is It Good?

Exceptionally Good (7/8)

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