Director:Angelina Jolie
Actors:Jack O’Connell, Takamasa Ishihara, Domhnall Gleeson
Adapted From:Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
After a near-fatal plane crash in WWII, Olympian Louis Zamperini spends a harrowing 47 days in a raft with two fellow crewmen before he’s caught by the Japanese navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.
I read the novel of the same name earlier this year and for the most part really enjoyed it. Thus my dad (who recommend said book) and I were looking forward to seeing the movie, despite reservations. Those reservations were justly earned. I’m not sure if I can think of one redeeming quality. Louie Zamperini led a full life before and after his time as a P.O.W. and with the very short exception of his participation in the 1936 Olympics Angelina Jolie skipped over the majority of his childhood, time in the army before his capture and his difficulties adjusting to life after the war. Instead she focused on his stint in the camp and ill-treatment by one guard nicknamed “The Bird”. It was such a vague telling with so many intricacies left out and was a huge disappointment. I think it would have been better off as a mini-series to capture the full grandeur of Zamperini’s life and described it as fitting Gone with the Wind into a two-hour movie it cannot be given justice nor to one’s satisfaction.
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