Many believed that Unbroken would be a top Oscar contender this year but even from the start I didn’t believe the hype about this film. Angelina Jolie is just not the name in directing that catches my attention and the only reason this film caught my eye was because the Coen Brothers wrote it.
Now Unbroken is a huge historical biopic about Louis Zamperini, the Olympic gold medalist who went on to become a prisoner of war in World War 2. Now the story follows many turns from his childhood to being stuck out at sea before getting captured. From the premise Unbroken seems a masterpiece of the ages, the real Forrest Gump, and although I tried to love this film it was just too bad to bear. There was literally zero character development, with Louis’ character summed up through a 10 minute flashback sequence that could have been ripped straight out of Forrest Gump itself. From the films tense opening scene I found the acting from the whole cast to be terrible, one of my newcomer favourites Jack O’Connell performed in the lead and I must say this was probably the worst performance he has given. Playing Louis Zamperini made O’Connell basically carry the whole film on his shoulders but the poor American accent and the obvious fake tan to make him seem Italian felt so parodic. This for me was not his sole fault because the whole cast of generally good actors gave poor performances from Domhnall Gleeson to Garrett Hedlund. The poor performances came down to bad casting choices and poor direction from the director.
Unbroken’s general atmosphere is meant to be tense and thrilling because of the life threatening subject matter at hand but the whole time I felt no fear or remorse for any of the characters. Everything was so melodramatic and cheesy it made me feel as if Angelina Jolie was trying to force feed emotion to the audience. Even Alexandre Desplat’s score felt forced and melodramatic, for such a good composer this came as a shock when most of the music felt overbearing in scenes. Then we had the closed off cinematography that concentrated too much on the characters and less on the locations. Roger Deakins is one of my favourite cinematographers but even he failed to capture the ocean and Japan in general. The view of Unbroken felt very closed off and oddly isolated. The films structure was poor and maybe this was because the Coen’s writing would have suited their minimalistic view of the story rather than Angelina Jolie’s generic view. Unbroken feels like it was wrote by the Coen’s for the Coen’s to add their own artistic flare through the directing. However, Angelina Jolie went by the script frame by frame and added none of her own directors interpretation or camera work to the film.
The story for Unbroken only becomes a problem because of structure, the flashbacks of Zamperini’s development is too short and the scenes out at sea are too long. Too long because nothing really happens, there’s no emphasis on location and what you are left with is 45 minutes of three men on a boat doing nothing apart from decaying. Then the whole Prisoner of War camp situation is left too long with little happening. The years go by and the conditions get worse but the shift of time feels so erratic and unnatural. Unbroken felt too long at 145 minutes, and the story needed probably another 30 minutes but the whole film needed a whole new director. Angelina Jolie rushed to fit in many themes into one film but she still made it feel too long. What you are left with in the end is an epic film with many important moments but not enough plot development between them. Angelina Jolie took a story about an American Hero and made his story seem exaggerated and unrealistic. This comes down to a poor effort from the entire team behind this film but mainly down to poor direction.
Final Verdict – 4.0
Ajay Lee 