Unbroken - Not Very Jolly

"Unbroken" is one of the more silent and unkown Oscar nominees this year. It's actually up for three awards, one for cinematography, and for both sound mixing and sound editing. It doesn't really have any star power to it, except for the fact that Angelina Jolie directed it. But not too many people go into a film because Jolie directed it. Still, it's done okay enough at the boxoffice, and well enough with the critics. Now it's my turn to talk about it.

"Unbroken" follows Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who ends up fighting in the second world war against the Japanese. The first part of the film focuses on his childhood, him finding his dream and going to the Olympics in Nazi Germany before suddenly being thrown into the middle of a war. The main plot of the film starts after Louis' bomber crew crashes into the ocean on a rescue mission, they are stranded in the ocean until they're picked up by a Japanese ship and are then put into Japanese prisoner camps.

The film has gotten generally luke warm reviews, people say it's been done before, better. And I have to agree to an extent. We have seen all of the elements of this film before, but I can't say that I have seen them put together like this. Does it work? Not all the time. Sometimes it just drags on because they decide to spend too much time on one aspect of the film, while other times it goes to fast, you barely get to understand what's going on before it's over. The acting is nothing to write home about. It's just there, it gets the job done, but you won't be left with any lasting impressions of it. The biggest surprise there was how well Domhnall Gleeson pulled off an American accent.

All in all, this isn't something you need to spend two plus hours of your life on, unless you're really big on war films. You won't regret watching it, but you definitely won't remember it fondly even a week after. It will just be another thing that happened in your life, and you won't even remember it again until that one time you happen to zap by it on cable and spend a few moments trying to remember why it feels to familiar.