Unbreakable: Critic Reviews

By the time the film is over you may feel as if the 12 year old inside of you has been utterly wowed and that the adult is still going, 'Hmmmm...'

What Unbreakable shows is Mr. Shyamalan's remarkable growth as a director.

Whatever your final verdict, you could do worse than enjoy one of the most fertile minds in Hollywood.

Unbreakable is a film that begins with a train wreck and then, figuratively speaking, becomes one.

Unbreakable is at once flagrantly absurd and stubbornly mournful.

Shyamalan made the unfortunate but predictable choice of trying to bottle The Sixth Sense's lightning and reuse it.

Ponderous, pretentious and self-indulgent, it nonetheless puts Mr. Shyamalan's technical prowess on display. Still, you'll wonder if the pay-off was worth the journey.

The surprise ending here is as bad as Sixth Sense's was good.

Samuel L. Jackson plays a comic-book-art collector named Elijah, as in the prophet, and his stare could probably burn a hole through Superman's Fortress of Solitude.

Even if the ending doesn't entirely succeed, it doesn't cheat, and it comes at the end of an uncommonly absorbing movie.

Unbreakable is as compellingly watchable, stylish and intriguing as its predecessor, its ending has almost the opposite effect on the overall picture.

Far-fetched and utterly humorless.

Unbreakable is a compelling yarn.

With Unbreakable , Mr. Shyamalan establishes himself as a distinctive auteur with a very personal style.

The presence of pop culture refs via comics makes quite notable the absence of any humor or sense of fun, just as it makes its pretentions to deep meaning and self-importance all the more specious.

Unbreakable, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's dazzling reunion with Bruce Willis confirms he's one of the most brilliant filmmakers working today.

All I will say about it is that its overwhelming horror hit me more powerfully than a locomotive, and that, after I knew what it was, I couldn't believe I had overlooked it. Days later, I still find myself obsessed with that twist.

There's no question Unbreakable, for all its flaws, is a movie that stays with you.

Long before these came up on screen, however, Unbreakable had defined itself as a big disappointment.

Unbreakable shows Shyamalan as a rapidly maturing filmmaker, taking risks and making them pay off.

Unbreakable may not be beautiful, but it sure has character.

An engaging and intriguing yarn.

An intriguing story executed with visual panache and fine acting performances.

Thrill-kill plots, cardboard characters and zap-pow editing are not for Shyamalan, who takes his good, thoughtful time to snare audiences in his dark web.

Unbreakable seems to have encouraged all its actors to emulate Willis' lugubrious pacing, meaning that usually vibrant actors such as Wright Penn and Jackson are not shown to their best advantage.