This Unbroken movie review finds the film breaking into mediocrity. What separates a great movie from a good one? Direction? Well, then Angelina Jolie misses it by an inch. Albeit, she might reach it someday given the experience she is gradually garnering under her directorial hat. However sadly she isn’t still there. Yes , Unbroken isn’t really that great.
Unbroken Movie Review: Plot and Survival Story
The biopic we have is a survivor’s tale of Louis Zamperini embodied by Jack O’ Connell. He isn’t a hero exactly, rather someone who has endured ugly guts of war.
The drama of Unbroken reeks of war perversion. But at some point it makes you compare it with the likes of ‘The Last Castle’. Jack isn’t Redford however he still gives his best. Miyavi is not exactly James Gandolfini as Mutsushiro Watanabe and misses facial expressions by light years.
Unbroken Movie Review: Where the Story Falls Short
Things that were outrageous were: Louis’s stint as an athlete, a bland story that picked pace without any powerful interest or focus. The story itself did not throw light on any of his heroics except at one point where Louis’ decision reflects simply doing the right thing. It misses the point of the movie to show the athlete who inadvertently got lost into war owing to an unfortunate event. The script demanded quality thought spent into the melodrama it should have retained. Unfortunately it failed to reach those heights.
I’m nothing. Just let me be nothing.
Cherishable Bits We Take
Some of the best bits of the Unbroken movie were placed right at the ingress. Like the fight sequences that were portrayed happening beautifully around a tenacious bomber and was manifested through different vantage points via aircrew’s eyes.
Zamperini’s pining for survival in an ocean of sharks marred by devastating hunger (watch out for that albatross bit), punishing tides, hopeful rain, and the dark life that followed therefrom were also beautifully shown.
Jolie tries to venture into subtlety by showing the filth of war: trodden books, corpses, loss and grief, however fails to portray the exact image of her emotions. Her insipid presentation takes away the gist she wished to capture.
Downward Tumble
The plot just loses focus owing to the slow pace it carries throughout without a lucid screenplay to hold the viewers riveted. Even though the Coen brothers came up with the flick’s screenplay Unbroken hardly retains all the dramatic substance that matters.
The editing too is very pathetic. Her style of film-making is good for dramas, yet what Jolie still needs to find is a really good script that is accentuated further by a gorgeous screenplay.
There are some movies that make you pity its ill-fated actor, make you empathize with the protagonist, feel the pain. I was surprised to find out that nothing in this flick made me feel Zamperini’s pain. This again shoots a dozen questions at the direction.
Average alert. Watch Unbroken movie only if you have a lot of time to kill.
Watch the Unbroken trailer
Watch the official Unbroken trailer on YouTube.
What the Film Leaves Behind
Jolie clearly sees the scale in Zamperini’s life: the Olympic promise, the crash, the endless water, and the cruelty of captivity. The problem is not a lack of incidents. It is that the film moves through them with such tidy determination that it rarely lets a moment change the air around it. Survival becomes a sequence of tests instead of a feeling we carry with Louis.
Jack O’Connell has the physical presence for the role, and the early aerial passages have real tension. The ocean section is the film at its most persuasive because it strips the story down to endurance, hunger, and chance. It lets the audience sit with the uncertainty rather than telling us how inspiring every ordeal should be.
Once the story reaches the camp, the drama becomes repetitive. The abuse is serious, but the screenplay keeps circling the same beat without finding a sharper point of view. A biopic about resilience needs more than suffering on a timetable; it needs the small choices that explain the person who survives it.
That is why the film feels less moving than it ought to. There is respect for Zamperini in the production, and there are images worth remembering, yet reverence alone cannot make a story dramatic. This Unbroken movie review wanted more contradiction, more personality, and more life between the historical milestones.
As a war survival story, it has enough craft to hold attention in parts. As a portrait of a remarkable man, it is frustratingly cautious. Watch it for the survival sequences and O’Connell’s commitment, but do not expect the emotional force that its subject deserves.
For more films from the year, explore our 2014 movie reviews.
Unbroken Movie Review: Final Verdict
This Unbroken movie review returns to the same disappointment: the film has all the ingredients for a powerful survival drama but does not let them build into a strong emotional whole. Jolie photographs hardship with care, and the production never loses sight of the scale of what Louis endured. Yet the scenes often feel arranged to honor the facts instead of uncovering the man inside them.
The strongest material is the most immediate. The plane crash and the ocean ordeal create a blunt, physical tension that the later scenes struggle to match. There is a good film hiding in those moments, one that trusts silence, fear, and exhaustion to tell the story. When the script turns back toward broad declarations of courage, it becomes less vivid.
Louis Zamperini deserved a film with more bite and more curiosity. This version is respectful, handsome, and occasionally gripping, but it leaves too much feeling at a distance. It is an average watch with flashes of real craft, rather than the stirring biopic it so clearly wants to be.
Unbroken
