GRADE: A

This remarkably well-acted and highly original film impresses me every time I watch it. There’s really nothing else like it, and in many respects it’s an even better film than the young director’s debut effort, the box-office behemoth, The Sixth Sense.

Wrongly marketed as an action film and assumed by moviegoers to be another Bruce Willis high-energy affair—it is neither—Unbreakable is a marvelously clever variation on the search for personal identity and the crying need for heroes in 21st century.

That writer and director M. Night Shyamalan has managed to package a story containing those elements in the guise of a realistically based modern parable of comic book origin proportions is nothing short of astounding—with all the copycat crap out there it’s both refreshing and exhilarating to watch something that doesn’t instantly make you think of a hundred other movies.

From the opening bell, Unbreakable begins to cast its spell with a pair of brilliantly staged sequences. The first involves a young woman who’s just given birth to a child in a department store; the other a sequence that finds David Dunne (Willis) on a commuter train headed to Philadelphia from New York where he’s just interviewed for a position as the chief of security for a large company.

Like the story and film itself, these sequences are deceptive; beginning as quiet illuminations of their characters while slowly contributing to an unforeseen tension that viewers will find palpable. That tension leads to a horrific train crash in which every single person onboard is killed except Dunne, who survives the tragedy without a scratch.

Suffering more from bewilderment than any survivor’s guilt, the event gives Dunne pause. Was he chosen to survive this calamity, and if so, for what purpose? Then Dunne finds a note on his windshield from the owner of a high-end comic book art gallery asking “how many days have you been sick?”

Contemplating these questions leads Dunne to realize he's never been sick; never been hurt, broken any bones or suffered any injuries whatsoever. He can’t even remember having so much as a cold.

Searching for answers, Dunne seeks out the author of the note, Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson). A serious, highly educated and intense man, Price suffers from a malady known as “osteogenesis imperfecta,” a rare disease that causes his bones to break quite easily.

Taunted as a child and frequently injured, "Mr. Glass,” as the kids nicknamed him, spent much of his time reading comic books. It’s from that interest he gained his professional expertise and a notion that became the consuming focus of his entire existence.

That notion took the form of a theory in which Price concluded that if he was created by nature as an example of frailty in the extreme, then there must be someone who exists at the opposite end of the spectrum. Of course, he believes Dunne to be that person.

Dunne at first rejects the idea, thinking Price either a fool or a manipulator, but little by little his awareness of something different in himself pushes him closer and closer to Price as this fascinating, exceptionally well told story moves toward a pair of astonishing climaxes.

To say anymore about Unbreakable other than the fact it contains fine performances all around, a magnificent visual quality thanks to cinematographer Eduardo Serra and a moving score by James Newton Howard would be to spoil the impact of the surprises in-store.

Perhaps best of all, even once those surprises are known, Unbreakable will continue to engross viewers, who will be able to discover more of its treasures with subsequent screenings.

Forget what you may have heard about this polarizing film (still the director’s best), don’t miss this one!

#