| When Unbreakable begins, titles tells us how many comic books are sold daily, and how much time enthusiasts spend reading comic books in their lifetime. During the first segment, we witness a physician who is attending to the birth of Elijah Price, an African American child, in a Philadelphia department store in 1961; the baby’s arms and legs are broken at birth, indicating a genetic disease called osteogenesis imperfecta. Next, David Dunn (played by Bruce Willis) is returning from a job interview as security guard on a train from New York to Philadelphia, presumably in the year 2000. The train derails. Dunn, the only survivor, emerges from the wreck without a scratch. To his son Jeremy (played by Spencer Treat Clark), Dunn is a hero, though he has a college degree and only works as a security guard at Temple University. Price (played by Samuel L. Jackson), now 39 years old, has been saving newspaper clippings about disasters that cause many deaths, so he assumes that Dunn could survive only if he had supernatural powers. Accordingly, Price places a note on Dunn’s car one day, asking him how many days in his life he was ill. Dunn had not thought about the fact that he never got sick, though he nearly died at a young age when some boys pushed him into a swimming pool, and he emerged from an auto accident with some need for physical therapy. Nevertheless, he goes to the business indicated on the envelope of the note, which turns out to be an art gallery for classic comic drawings operated by Price. Then Price and Jeremy prod Dunn to come to terms with his special powers. One evening Price tells Dunn to “go where people are,” so he goes to the Philadelphia train station, where he spots a janitor, and is impelled to follow him to a house, and soon Dunn rescues three women in a house who are being terrorized by the janitor. Aware of his supernatural powers for the first time, he attends a public exhibition of the comic book drawings to again meet Price, who congratulates Dunn for a self-discovery that will give his life meaning from then on. After yet another enigmatic dialog, the film ends, and titles tells us that Dunn later exposed Price as the perpetrator of three acts of terrorism. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, Unbreakable, in short, has mysteries, surprises, revelations about supernatural powers, but is an “I see bad people” variation on his hit The Sixth Sense (1999). Many filmviewers will feel cheated that they have invested money to see a movie that is full of pretense and merely says that they have the power for good or evil if they can discover their own hidden talents and purpose for their life. MH |