A chronicle of the life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who was taken prisoner by Japanese forces during World War II.
Similar titles
You May Also Like
Reviews
I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Pretty Good
The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
I know that it is hopeless to think that a movie can possibly live up to that of the original book, but come on Angelina? Really? This was a terrible terrible TERRIBLE adaptation of the story. There is absolutely no character development. You learn a total of two names the whole movie! I can't possibly imagine Zemperini himself would have given this "movie" more than 1 star. There is an obscene amount of development and crucial events left out of this film. All the heart and gut wrenching sections of the book are turned into a sloppy two second portrayal of entire chapters. I honestly think Angelina was sitting there thumbing through the book and thought "oh, we better put this CRUCIAL event into the movie, um. Louie, go stand over there and look dazed, perfect, got it." COME ON! It made me so sad to have read the book and then see this pathetic attempt to relay even a fraction of the story. SO SO SO SO much is left out. If I hadn't read the book I would have been completely lost. The Bird was a complete sociopath, absolute lunatic that I sincerely hope is somewhere very hot right now. This movie showed him as a disgruntled guard that was a little power hungry. COME ON, ANGELINA!!!!!!! At least try to put some depth to him. Did you even read the book?????? At the end of the movie I was so surprised that it was over. I thought this can't possibly be it. There is so much left out. Made me very very very sad to think that this is the movie representation that a great man is remembered by...... agh.....
I read the book and laughed and cried with these men, and Angelina Jolie raced through this like she had a checklist. I could hear her yelling OK NEXT SCENE! the parts that were touching, were overlooked, and the parts that made you care were skipped over. The rescue from the raft skipped entirely and was tantamount to explaining their survival. This movie left me feeling empty, wondering if anyone involved actually read the lifechanging book from whence it was born. Characters you should hate and have nightmares about, left you feeling nothing. These were REAL MEN. HEROES. The team that did band of brothers could have made this into something that changed history of cinema, instead we got a hollow outline, that left me tired and a little bored. What a waste. Read the book Instead. I love movies and hate those who always claim the book is better but in this case, no truer words were ever spoken.
The timeless contract between director and cinema-goer is to make us care about the movie, to change our thinking in some way, to transport us, to make our lives better. Unbroken does none of these. In some ways, it is similar to Scorsese's Silence, which is two hours of unremitting medieval torture, or Iñárritu's Revenant, which was diCaprio grunting through snow for 2+ hours.Jolie's Unbroken is a litany of Japanese cruelty and brutality. Up to a certain point, it shows how realistic WWII POW camps were, but this is not a documentary but a movie. It is meant, according to the unspoken contract mentioned above, to take the viewer on a journey, make him care about a character, see a character grow (even despite tremendous adversity), and give the viewer some kind of emotional cathartic satisfaction at the end.In Unbroken, though, Jolie minimalises any character growth in a rather spartan "show the viewers and let them figure out what is going on" methodology. As a result, Zamperini, our lead character, simply exists from one scene to the next. He does not show any emotional growth arc whatsoever. He simply takes all the multifarious beatings his captors give him as though that were enough. Ms Jolie, it is NOT. We need to see a character move as an active participant in the story, as a maker of events, not a passive recipient. To put it bluntly, here is the storyline (spoiler alert.)Zamperini gets captured. He gets beaten often and mistreated. The End. Sure there is a brief storyboard at the conclusion of the movie which fleshed out the character a little, but it is NOT ENOUGH. I suspect that Ms Jolie believed that the various scenes that she so treasured would trigger the same emotional responses in her audience as her, a sadly mistaken belief. Towards the end of the movie, I was badly needing Zamperini to DO something instead of just accept further beatings. We saw NOTHING of his internal journey, NOTHING of any form of resistance, NOTHING but an endless series of beatings and Watanabe, his tormentor, saying the same things over and over and beating him without any point at all.The end, when it came, was a glorious relief, and I say that in a negative sense. Count this a failure, Ms Jolie. Do better next time, if there is a next time.
UNBROKEN is a WW2 movie that once again has the hook of being based on a true story. This one's about an Olympic runner who becomes a bomber pilot and who ends up in a life raft in the middle of the Pacific after his plane develops a mechanical fault. This occupies the first half of the running time; the second half moves into prisoner of war territory. This film received a lot of attention for being directed by Angelina Jolie, but it feels very much like she's copying Clint Eastwood's style; he, of course, directed her in CHANGELING, so it's a basic imitation more than anything else.Sadly, Jolie makes some novice mistakes here; the story goes on far too long at times, and ends up being full of sappy, cheesy stuff at the climax, stuff that had me wincing in embarrassment; it was so gritty earlier on, too. Jack O'Connell gives a fine performance as the lead, but this does feel too derivative of the likes of LIFE OF PI and in particular MERRY Christmas, MR. LAWRENCE.