Film Review: Unbroken

Dir: Angelina Jolie

With: Jack O'Connell, Domhnall Gleeson, Takamasa Ishihara

Runtime: 137 minutes

HAVING made her directorial debut with a drama set in Bosnia, Angelina Jolie looks again to war and its victims in Unbroken, a moving if uneven look at the life of Louis Zamperini, the former Olympic athlete who became a prisoner of the Japanese during the Second World War.

Zamperini, who died this year, was a genuine, all-American hero. Any maker of a biopic would have been spoiled for choice as to which part of his life to concentrate on. In opting for the first half, Jolie has arguably left the best material aside. As accomplished as Unbroken is, what we have here is a familiar story of extraordinary courage, when what we could have had is an exceptional film.

Jolie opens the story in thrilling fashion, with a US air bomber crew on a mission over the Pacific. We see how the war in the air could be as up close and personal as the conflict on the ground. As the crew scramble to deploy bombs they come under fire. It is every man for each other and Zamperini, played by the outstanding young British actor Jack O'Connell, is in the thick of it, rushing to help his brothers in arms all the while being as terrified as them.

From the air, Jolie returns to earth, flashing back to Zamperini's childhood in California. We see a scamp of a boy, forever getting into trouble, much to the horror of his Italian immigrant parents. Fearing that Louis is edging ever closer to jail, his brother encourages him to take up athletics. The youngster throws himself into running, his brother pushing him onwards with the words, "If you can take it, you can make it".

So the story unfolds on two tracks - what happened in the war, and what occurred before it, including Zamperini's attendance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, presided over by Hitler. The story of the war, in turn, falls into two parts - Zamperini's crash into the sea and his subsequent 47 days adrift, followed by his capture by the Japanese.

The period in the life raft with two of his comrades, one played by the ever excellent Domhnall Gleeson, is well-paced, with the routine of drifting along regularly punctuated by life or death moments as sharks circle and bombers fly overhead. The trio are fighting for their very survival, little knowing that an even tougher test lies ahead when they are picked up by a Japanese boat and sent to a camp run by the sadistic Miyavi, or "The Bird" as he is known to inmates. Played by Takamasa Ishihara, The Bird takes a particular dislike to Zamperini and makes his life truly hellish.

The scenes in the camp, though powerful, do not have the impact they should. This is largely, one feels, due to their familiarity. From The Bridge on the River Kwai to the more recent The Railway Man, cinema has hardly flinched from showing the horrors that occurred on the Pacific front. Yet this is the part of the tale on which Jolie lavishes most time. It is also the point at which the film begins to drift and starts to feel like a 137-minute watch.

The screenplay, based on the book by Laura Hillenbrand, is by a grand total of four writers - the Coen brothers, Richard LaGravanese (Behind the Candelabra) and William Nicholson (Mandela, Gladiator) - and it shows in the way the story lacks shape and focus.

O'Connell, however, exerts a firm grip on the attention throughout. Between Starred Up, 1971, and his outstanding performance here, O'Connell had quite the year in 2014. He is a genuine movie actor, able to fill the screen, and the film, with his presence. Even with this running time, one is left wanting to see more of him.

The same goes for Zamperini's story, the one that started after the war when he came home and had to deal with the lingering trauma caused by his treatment. That tale of survival is the one this viewer would have liked to have seen Jolie tell. In Unbroken, however, that story goes unspoken.