Unbroken movie review & film summary (2014)

That begins when Zamperini is captured after 47 days adrift, and forced into horrific conditions and hard labor in Japanese Prisoner of War camps. Here, Jolie simply fails to convey the danger and what’s truly at stake. “Unbroken” starts to go through the motions of history recreation instead of real character drama, and while I have loved Roger Deakins’ work in the past, it’s too “pretty” here, covering every shot in that vague beige of WWII memory, which never allows us to put ourselves in Zamperini’s speedy shoes. If we can’t feel the urgency of his plight, we won’t have the same emotional response to it as we would with more blood, more dirt, and just more danger. It becomes something we watch instead of something we experience. There's a difference.

The relative disappointment of “Unbroken” has nothing to do with Jack O’Connell, a truly gifted actor who has emerged as a fully-formed movie star with this, his even better work in “Starred Up,” and next year’s great “’71.” He may not be a household name yet. He will be. In fact, he’s so good that one wishes Jolie asked more of him. Gleeson also deserves praise for taking a smaller role and making it memorable. He too is an actor really worth watching. “Unbroken” could be a film that we look back on as an early entry in the careers of major stars.

Because the disappointing thing is we won’t really look back at the film itself on its own merits. It’s one of those inspirational Hollywood dramas about which there isn’t anything "overtly wrong" with it. It’s well-cast, it looks great, it has that intense centerpiece in the raft, and it certainly conveys a true story worth telling. And yet I keep coming back to that beautiful sunrise that opens the film. It’s just too damn pretty.