Quickly after “Sixth Sense”, director M. Night Shyamalan presented another of his great films at the end of 2000: “Unbreakable”. A magnificent superhero story with Bruce Willis and Samuel Lee Jackson, which Quentin Tarantino places very high in his favorite films of the period.
Quentin Tarantino, first fan ofUnbreakable
Unbreakable sits majestically in the filmography of M. Night Shyamalan. A dark superhero film starring Bruce Willis and Samuel Lee Jackson, which unfolds an eerie magical realism on the story of a man who turns out to be a superhero. Spectacular, moving, in an aesthetic and narrative continuity with Sixth Sense, Unbreakable attracted rave reviews when it was released in the winter of 2000, from the public as well as from the most prestigious cinema professionals, including Quentin Tarantino.
“I think Bruce Willis is absolutely magnificent in this film”
In 2009, the director of pulp Fiction and Kill Bill ready for the ranking game for Sky Movies, delivering its 20 best films of the period 1992 – 2009. In fact, he gives 19 without hierarchy, in alphabetical order, explaining that the only one that really stands out is Battle Royale. In his list, where we find in particular Speed, Memories of Murder, Hearing, Dogville, he concludes with Unbreakablewhich conveniently gives him the time to say all the good things he thinks about it – and to tackle his marketing in the process (from 5’15 min).
Already there is the greatest performance that Bruce Willis has ever given in a film, I think it is absolutely magnificent. Next, it’s a brilliant take on the Superman mythos.
For me the film was very obscure when it came out, on its subject. I think they (the studios, editor’s note) made it difficult, because the film can be presented in one question, which would have been much more intriguing than their advertisements, and which would be: “What if Superman was on Earth but that he didn’t know he was Superman?”, which is the subject of the film, and we only understand it in front of… In short, I think that “Unbreakable” is one of the masterpieces in our time.
Quentin Tarantino thus drops the word “masterpiece”, and we do not see how to contradict it, as long as Unbreakable is a superhero film as perfect as it is unique, with intact emotional power more than twenty years after its theatrical release.
