Film Review: Unbroken

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Unbroken. Rated M (mature themes and violence). 137 minutes. Directed by Angelina Jolie. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson. Based on the book by Laura Hillenbrand. 

Verdict: An incredible story about the power of Faith. 

Since the end of hostilities in 1945, writers and filmmakers have turned to World War 2 as a source of rich dramatic material. The treatment of Prisoners of War by their Japanese captors has featured prominently, with The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983), and The Railway Man (2013) just three of the most well-known films to explore the subject. And unless you have been living under a rock for the last decade or so, you will know how gruesome that subject can be. 

While Jolie, cinematographer Roger Deakins, a quartet of writers and an outstanding ensemble of actors have undeniably made an excellent film, Unbroken struggles to bring any new insight or justification to the essential conflict, which it pursues with relentless, almost breathless, vigour.

Louis Zamperini’s (superbly portrayed by Jack O’Connell) story is an incredible one, and the best of Unbroken is when the film focuses on the extraordinary good fortune that ensured Zamperini’s continued survival against all the odds. It is little wonder that Zamperini made a pact with God to serve Him for the rest of his life if he was to survive the horrors that he endured on a daily basis – a pact Zamperini held to until he died in July last year.

Mutsuhiro Watanabe’s (Takamasa Ishihara) obsession with breaking Zamperini’s body and spirit becomes, simply, incomprehensible, and Unbroken’s bleak, brutal and unforgiving second act becomes harder and harder to watch. And then the reason crystallises. It is not a film about forgiveness in the same way that The Railway Man is. Unbroken, instead, is one of the most perfect films about the power of an unbreakable Faith – especially in oneself – in recent memory.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Skyfall

Skyfall. Rated M (violence and infrequent coarse language). 143 minutes. Directed by Sam Mendes. Screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan.

Verdict: A triumph of cinematic storytelling.

How, one could ask, might filmmakers mark the 50^th anniversary of the venerable James Bond films that began with Dr No in 1962 (with Sean Connery as Bond)? As iconic literary and cinematic characters go, Ian Fleming’s ‘007’ arrives with a generation of history and association, ensuring that any new James Bond film is going to be rigorously scrutinised – and what we have with Skyfall is an undeniable triumph on a vast cinematic storytelling scale.

When MI6 bungles an attempt to retrieve a stolen computer hard drive that contains the identities of undercover agents around the world, the head of MI6 – ‘M’ (Judi Dench) – is held personally to account. But when a sinister Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) launches a cyberterrorist attack on the organisation’s headquarters, M finds herself fighting not only for her own life, but the survival of everyone associated with the intelligence organisation she commands.