Unbroken (2014) - Despite good elements, Jolie's Grand WWII Biopic is mostly distant and weak

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Jack O'Connell (Starred Up (2013)) as Louis Zamperini on a poster for Angelina Jolie's Unbroken

Olympic champion runner Louis Zamperini gets shot down as a US Air Force pilot during World War II, and after a long time on a raft in the Pacific Ocean gets interned in a Japanese POW camp, where he and other prisoners endure great sufferings.

Unbroken begins with some incredible aerial warfare scenes. Another thing about it that deserves praise is popular Japanese rock star Miyavi's (Oresama (2004, video)) impressive performance as Mutsuhiro 'The Bird' Watanabe. Zamperini and many others are unfortunately portrayed by distractingly handsome actors, and the film's polished look also doesn't help get us involved in a character and a story that feels distant, - and which has a smack of better, preceding films.
Unbroken is written by Richard LaGravanese (Beautiful Creatures (2013)), William Nicholson (Gladiator (2000)) and Ethan and Joel Coen (Burn After Reading (2008), both), based on Laura Hillenbrand's (Seabisquit: An American Legend (2001)) biography Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010), and directed by Angelina Jolie (In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011)) as her second fiction feature. The film becomes boring, and Jolie's own relation to this almost exclusively male-filled story seems thin; we don't feel the creator behind the work. There is also something clichéd about the grand treatment Zamperini gets here. The development in his life, which is related in the end, is moving, - but it can't save a fundamentally weak film.

Related posts:

Angelina Jolie: 2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
The Changeling (2008) or, The Christine Collins Story (actress)

 

Watch an official trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 65 mil. $

Box office: 163.4 mil. $

=  Minor hit

[Unbroken premiered November 17 (Sydney) and runs 137 minutes. Universal purchased the book rights in 2011, while having owned the movie rights to Zamperini's story from the late 1950s. Jolie was reportedly paid 1 mil. $ to direct the film. Filming took place in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia from October 2013 - February 2014. The film opened #3, behind The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and Into the Woods, to a 30.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for a total of 3 weeks and grossed an impressive 115.6 mil. $ (70.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were China with 5.4 mil. $ (3.3 %) and France with 4.9 mil. $ (3 %). A Japanese change.org petition for a ban on the film in Japan by Japanese nationalists was successful in disrupting the Japanese release of the film to a much smaller scale. A Dutch-Indonesian group started another petition in response, voicing their support for the film and its portrayal of the harsh prisoner abuse and torture committed by the Japanese during WWII. The film got nominated for 3 Oscars: Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins), lost to Emmanuel Lubezki for Birdman, Best Sound Mixing, lost to Whiplash, and Best Sound Editing, lost to American Sniper. It was also chosen as one of AFI's Top 10 movies of the year. Unbroken is rotten at 52 % with a 6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Unbroken?