Unbroken (2014) Directed by Angelina Jolie. Starring: Jack O’Connell, Takamasa Ishihara, Domhnall Gleeson. IMDB says: “After a near-fatal plane crash in WWII, Olympian Louis Zamperini spends a harrowing 47 days in a raft with two fellow crewmen before he’s caught by the Japanese navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.”
Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini lived through extraordinary circumstances fitting for a film adaptation. He competed in the Olympics after growing up in his small California town where he was raised by Italian immigrants. After enlisting in the Army Air Forces his plane was shot down and he was stranded at sea with two other crew mates for over a month, only to be saved by the Japanese Navy. After that he spent years in POW camps, being especially targeted because of his Olympic past, particularly by a sadistic guard Mutsuhiro Watanabe (or “The Bird”). That’s a whole lot of devastation and deprivation for a person to face. The film sticks it right in front of your face and makes you look at it closely. It’s a tough, ceaseless watch at times.
It’s not fun to watch pain and torture when you know it happened to a real person (some might say at all, but I’ve never been opposed to horror movies that do the same). It’s hard, and at the end doesn’t feel entirely gratifying except that you go in knowing he will survive. Unbroken is pretty good, a war film that focuses more on the individual experience and the hell of war with a microscope on one very unlucky soldier rather than the broad scope of battle.
As a biopic, it’s a close following of the book that it’s based on, with just something important missing under the surface. Every time I thought I had a grasp on just who Louis was it would slip away a little bit. Was he the lighthearted jokester who was always trying to lift other’s spirits or the contemplative, serious man who’s soberly suffering through his treatment? I’m sure it was some of both, but I often felt like one side would be left behind to show the other depending on the circumstance. I wanted a firmer basis for this man who lived through so much. I wanted just a few scenes of him being himself, without going through a triumphant athletic feat or enduring a beating. The closest comes when he’s stuck on the raft at sea describing his mother’s recipes to pass the time (incidentally the time at sea was my favorite part of the film).
After seeing Unbroken, I read a story that was not included in the film, about Louis climbing a pole at the Olympic Games in Berlin and stealing Hitler’s personal flag. What a unique and funny story. I’d loved to see something like that in this film, that wasn’t there to inform the plot, but the person. Of course it’s not just that scene that would push this film to the next level, but it would help to connect more with the person you’re watching go through endless agony.
Despite this, I still thought the film was well-made, with an especially fine performance by Jack O’Connell as Zamperini. His acting pushes through most of my complaints about his character development and makes the film seem worth watching just to see this newcomer (although his smaller film out this year, Starred Up might also fit that bill from what I’ve heard). Most of the supporting roles are simply serviceable, while (as usual) Garrett Hedlund stands out as a Major attempting to retrieve Japanese intel from within the POW camp with whom Louis connects. The other major player in this film is The Bird, who is interestingly played by Japanese musician Takamasa Ishihara. For the most part he gets the job done, although by default the character comes off as cartoonishly evil. By all accounts he was that evil in real life though.
This film achieves just what it needs to as a WWII biopic. It shows the coming-of-age part of this Olympic athlete’s life in a by the books fashion and tells the harrowing wartime story in grim, horrific detail. It’s an inspirational story to show what all Louis Zamperini overcame, not just to achieve success but to survive. It’s just missing a heart that would raise it from a good biopic about the human spirit to a stirring film that moves you beyond the plot.
FTS SCORE: 75%