Unbroken—Movie Review

by Peter J. O'Connell                      

Unbroken. Released: Dec. 25, 2014. Running time: 137 mins. Rated: PG-13 for war violence, including intense sequences of brutality, and for brief language.

The heroic epics of ancient times usually began “in medias res.” This Latin phrase means “in the middle of the action.” Flashbacks creating the back story followed. This is also the approach that director Angelina Jolie takes in Unbroken, the story of an American Olympian and World War II hero, Louie Zamperini.

The action into which we are plunged at the beginning of the film is a truly stunning sequence depicting the bombing run of a B-24 on a Japanese position in the Pacific in 1943. We see that such planes were essentially simply steel shells, with open sections, and we feel the intense reactions of Louie and the rest of the crew as the B-24 flies and fights its way through flak-filled skies swarming with enemy fighter planes.

Flashbacks show us Louie, played by Jack O'Connell, growing up in an immigrant Italian Catholic family in California. Young Louie starts getting into trouble but is fleet of foot and develops discipline and determination by becoming a local track-and-field star rather than a juvenile delinquent. He even becomes one of America's standout athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Louie's discipline and determination, as well as religious faith and the knowledge that he is loved by his family, sustain him in the ordeals that afflict him during the war. On a rescue mission, his plane crashes into the Pacific. He is one of only three survivors, who spend an astonishing 47 days in rubber life rafts in the shark-filled ocean waters. We see the desperate measures that the three take to stay alive. Finally, they are simultaneously rescued and captured when a Japanese naval vessel comes upon them.

Brutal treatment in two prison camps follows. Louie is singled out for especially harsh measures by Watanabe, a sadistic Japanese officer played by Takamasa Ishihara. (Ishihara's sleek, smooth features and silken manner remind one of an Asian version of early James Spader.) Louie draws this attention because of being an Olympian, and also, the film hints, because Watanabe may feel a homoerotic attraction to him that results in a kind of love/hate syndrome.

Louie's finest moment comes when the Japanese offer him a comfortable lifestyle if he will make broadcasts against the United States—and he refuses. On-screen information tells us that Louie underwent some emotional and psychological difficulties after the war but overcame them through religious faith and the love of his wife and family. Actual news footage shows him running with the Olympic torch in Japan in 1988—running past one of the prison camps where he was held. He died at age 97 in July 2014.

Jolie's film, which is based on Laura Hillenbrand's best-selling book and includes the noted Coen brothers among its screenwriters, is a very worthy endeavor, well served by O'Connell, Ishihara and the rest of its relatively little-known cast, but it tends to evoke admiration for Louie Zamperini without forging an emotional bond with him for audiences. However, as we note the men who flew with Zamperini and the hundreds imprisoned with him, the film does remind us that his struggle and eventual triumph differed only in degree from that of so many others of what has been rightly called “the greatest generation.” See the film for its own merits and as a salute to them.