Unbroken (Movie)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1809398/
Through the epic and ambitious, Jolie’s second outing as a director fails to do justice outing as a director fails to do justice to the rousing real life story of Louis Zamperini.
For her second film as a director, Angelina Jolie has elected to go down the old school Hollywood route an inspirational war picture about athlete-turned soldier Louis Zamperini who survived weeks adrift in an open boat after his plane was shut down over the Pacific during the second world war, then endured a horrific period in a prisoner of war camp. Though high minded and well as being conceived on an epic scale there is something faintly stodgy about the endeavor. Jolie does however get things off to a cracking start. She introduces Zamperini in his role as a B-52 bombardier on a flight as the US is pushing the Japanese back across the Pacific Zamperini drops his bombs, then has to grapple with a stuck bomb bay door as his plane takes vicious fire from enemy fighters. Jolie films the sequence with a rackety clanging realism that puts one right in the cockpit. Unfortunately things are not maintained at this intense pitch Zamperini’s story breaks down neatly into a three act structure and Unbroken appears to take its cue rather too readily from this well made conventional narrative design.
This is a true story, right enough, but there are inevitable echoes of other films. Though apparently keen to stick to the facts. Jolie’s stolidly conventional approach to the matrimonial hardly freshness it up. As for Julie, where does this leave her? Unbroken is undoubtedly being positioned as awards bait, and the goodwill she has inside and outside Hollywood may generate some Oscar nominations. But like her first film, there is a reined in by the book quality to much of the film-making that does not exactly add to its impact. Zamperini’s is an inspiring story all right, but in Jolie’s hands it is all a bit inspirational.
