Trailer:
“My bones break as easy as glass…and if I can be on one end of the extreme spectrum, why can’t someone else be on the other end?”
Arrogance is the ultimate downfall of man, and no one else should know that lesson better than M Night Shyamalan who recently has turned out such stellar films as Last Airbender, The Happening, and Lady in the Water. Yet back in 2000 Shyamalan was still riding the waves of success that came with The Sixth Sense, his first film and the peak of his filmmaking career. For his second follow up movie, he decided to go with a very odd choice. A superhero origin thriller.
Reuniting with Bruce Willis, Shyamalan tells the story of a security guard who becomes the only survivor of a devastating train crash. Stranger yet, after being pulled from the rubble, he didn’t have even a single scratch on him. Shortly after he is contacted by a seemingly crazy comic enthusiast named Elijah Price AKA Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson). He is called Mr. Glass because he was diagnosed with Type I osteogenesis imperfecta, causing his bones to be as “weak as glass”. Yet he has a ludicrous theory that if he can be on one extreme end of the spectrum, being super weak, why couldn’t some else be on the other end and nearly invulnerable. From there on he becomes obsessed with proving to David Dunn (Willis) that he is a real life superhero.
Now I am going to be honest here. The early works of Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs) had very imaginative story’s but the writing, specifically in the dialogue department, has never overwhelmed me. He typically likes to direct his actors to work in a very stilted fashion, making his already clumsy dialogue even worse in parts. Luckily this is not so obvious in his early films because he attaches very talented actors to the rolls. People capable of smoothing it over and injecting a little life into the characters where the writing fails.
Bruce Willis is obviously the protagonist and presumably has the power of invulnerability, enhanced physical capabilities, and can sense if people have commit a crime by just touching them. These are at least what Mr. Glass thinks. David Dunn is an interesting character because he struggles between his own grounded reality, family issues, and this annoying comic book dealer who keeps pestering him. The fact that he had powers all along and didn’t know it is what separates him from other on screen heroes. It makes him more interesting as he has been living in a state of denial for so long and the film is more about acceptance than it is about fighting crime.
As for Samuel L. Jackson, he does a great job portraying the Professor X- like character that he is near the beginning of the film. The scenes between him and Willis are very well done and it is hard to pin down if he is a guy trying to bring out his full potential or just a crazy person messing with his head. Mr. Glass also has a good back story to him, being a comic book lover and constantly crippled kid due to his illness. He actually had more back-story on him than David Dunn did. The fact that he is hurt so easily also adds a nice bit of tension to the scenes he is in because you expect everything that touches him to snap his bones in two.
As for the rest of the cast, they are mediocre to terrible. The wife just has a bored expression on her face all the time and his son makes Aang for Last Airbender look like an acting pro. The fact is that what makes the story work is the performances from Willis and Jackson, they had little support from anyone else. Not only were the son’s lines badly delivered, but many of his scenes (like where he is about to shoot his dad) comes off as silly and melodramatic more than anything else.
This is a Shyamalan film so you know there needs to be a twist in there somewhere, the guy seems incapable of writing a script without at least one. This film’s twist through was really unnecessary and felt tossed in during the last five minutes in order to create some sort of closing. In fact the twist just makes the rest of the story feel twice as ridiculous and absurd, which is a shame because for the most part it’s an interesting new take on a superhero origin. Now if the twist had been introduced midpoint of the film, that might have added something to the story rather than feeling like an unnecessary tacked on addition.
In the end the film is sort of a mixed box. The acting by the leads is great but the rest of the cast is a big bore, the concept is interesting but has some silly scenes to remind you how absurd it is. Yet at the end, when the credits start to roll, it really is a clever little film that fully uses the pros of the low budget indie films, excluding most of the negatives. It’s central concept and lead characters prove that you don’t need big fights scenes and lots of explosions to make an interesting and engaging superhero movie.
FINAL RATING: 7/10- (70%)
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