I will state for the record that I have never been a big fan of Angelina Jolie but in her directorial debut she really knocked it out of the park!
Unbroken is a pull-no-punches story of survival and service to the nation under the most difficult of circumstances. It is the true account of the war time ordeal of Olympic track star Louis Zamperini. Director Jolie and the screenwriters, among whom are the Coen brothers, create an excellent first person account of 1Lt. Zamperini’s performance as a bombardier aboard a US Army Air Corps B-24 Liberator. That first person account is interspersed with breakaway segments to Zamperini’s formative years and early life challenges on the streets and running tracks of Torrance, CA and the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The special effects that capture the violent crash and subsequent sinking of a defective plane Zamperini, his pilot and crew were issued for a search mission of another downed aircraft are extraordinary. The actors bringing this hellish memory to life are a list of lesser-knowns. Portraying Zamperini is a young Englishman by the name of Jack O’Connell who has made a name for himself in his native UK. Playing the part of Zamperini’s B-24 pilot Russell Allen “Phil” Phillips is an Irishman by the name of Domhnall Gleeson. Both give riveting performances of young officers who manage egress from a sinking bomber along with only one other surviving crewman and then spend 47 days adrift in a life raft. By the end of that nearly seven weeks only Zamperini and Phil survive only to be “rescued” by Imperial Japanese forces highlighted as a “good news, bad news” moment in the trailer. For the next two years, beginning on the atoll of Kwajalein, Zamperini and Phil were moved to a series of POW camps. They had more than one stint in camps supervised by Zamperini’s chief tormentor, an Imperial Japanese soldier by the name of Mutsuhiro “the Bird” Watanabe played by Japanese actor Takamasa Ishihara. The wholesale brutality toward POWs and enemy soldiers who either surrendered or were surrendered for which the Imperial Japanese were known was accurately depicted.
The film did not go into Mr. Zamperini’s later life as he was known to have struggled with alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder decades before it had a name. Nor did the film touch on his religious conversion as a born-again Christian or his career as a Christian inspirational speaker. What the story did convey were shining human intangibles of faith in comrades, will to survive, and personal resolve in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds and body and spirit crushing cruelty. The director, writers and actors did this story more than justice. It gained for Mr. Zamperini, who passed away on July 2nd of this year at the age of 97, a measure of immortality!
I give this picture five our of five stars *****.