In Unbroken, an adaptation of the popular book by Laura Hillenbrand, Jolie carries over some of that empathy. She doesn’t exactly misfire as much as she seems to be coasting along. The film contains all the right elements–World War II true story, high seas survival tale, soldier camaraderie, Japanese POW camp brutalities, cinematography by Roger Deakins–yet something is missing. Like the film adaptation of another Hillenbrand book, Seabiscuit, the film plays it too safe. Even a screenplay by The Coen Brothers seems plagued with a light touch all too wrong for the subject matter. The boldness and majesty the Coens brought to the remake of True Grit is mostly absent here.
Playing Louis Zamperini (who died earlier this year at the age of 97) Jack O’Connell, who was brilliant in the 2014 prison drama Starred Up, does a very decent but not overtly inspiring job. Shot down in The Pacific and forced to survive on a life raft for 47 days, Zamperini provides enough moxie for himself and his two pals, who are, in turn, morose and preoccupied. Once in the POW prison, his cheerfulness turns into defiance. He repeatedly refuses to look in the eye of his babyfaced tormentor, known as The Cat (Japanese rock star Miyavi). No beating is great enough to temper his steadfast pride. Yet I kept longing for someone like Kirk Douglas to suddenly inhabit the role and liven things up a little. Jolie’s husband Brad Pitt wouldn’t have been bad either. In this year’s Fury, Pitt had more charisma in one scene than O’Connell has in this whole film. The actor who dazzle us in Starred Up seems oddly restrained here. His best scenes are when he and Jolie manage to powerfully convey the trauma Zamperini faced. Although the film stops at the end of World War II, he went on to suffer from and battle back from PTSD. Meanwhile, the pure weirdness of The Bird, whose choirboy good looks only intensify his sadism, lingers long after the rest of the film fades.
Not Exactly A Broken Film But an Oddly Meek One…3.0 (out of 5) stars