'Unbroken': Angelina Jolie's direction is too conventional for such a harrowing story
鈥淯苍产谤辞办别苍,鈥� Angelina Jolie鈥檚 second tour of duty as a director 鈥撀爃er first was the estimable 2011 Serbian war drama, 鈥淚n the Land of聽Blood and Honey鈥� 鈥� is a movie about anguish and survival that rarely聽reaches the peak of passion.
Her source material is Laura Hillenbrand鈥檚聽mega-bestseller about Olympic runner Louis Zamperini (Jack O鈥機onnell),聽who endured 47 days marooned on a raft when his plane was shot down聽over the Pacific in WWII only to be incarcerated for over two years in the聽most brutal of Japanese POW camps. (Screenplay credit goes to Joel and聽Ethan Coen, whose trademark dark wit is nowhere to be found here, as聽well as Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson.) His chief nemesis聽in the camps is a sadistic camp commandant, Watanabe, nicknamed聽鈥渢he Bird鈥� (Miyavi), who inflicts all manner of gruesome punishments,聽including, in one protracted scene, forcing a long line of inmates, one after聽the other, to punch Zamperini in the face. (By comparison, J.K. Simmons in聽鈥淲hiplash鈥� is a puttytat).
And yet, the ordeals endured by Zamperini (who died in July at age 97) and the others seem not enough given what these men, as described in聽Hillenbrand鈥檚 book, actually went through. Jolie鈥檚 direction, after a slam-bang beginning involving a shot-up B-24, is too conventionally rendered聽for such a harrowing story. O鈥機onnell鈥檚 performance is in the same vein:聽No matter how much he suffers, I couldn鈥檛 get away from the fact that聽
this was an actor putting on a show. And Jolie inexplicably misses some聽obvious opportunities, like the moment, as described in Hillebrand鈥檚 book,聽when Zamperini, after running his heart out in the 1936 Berlin Olympics,聽meets Hitler.聽
Zamperini鈥檚 life story is genuinely inspirational, but the movie seems聽fashioned as a standard-issue profile in courage, with Zamperini, after聽a troubled youth, transformed into an almost saintlike figure. He would聽have been every bit as inspirational, even more so, without the halo. Grade:聽B- (Rated PG-13 for war violence including intense sequences of brutality, and for brief language.)
