Unbroken - Second last film of 2014

Saw my second last film of 2014 last Tuesday afternoon.  It's great to be off work and take advantage of cheap matinee performances starting at 4pm.  Unbroken is directed by Angelina Jolie, her first time behind the cameras.  In interviews she seems to think that she's going to be in contention come Oscar season, I do not agree.

Unbroken tells a true story of one Louis Zamperini, who was the son to Italian immigrants into the US, ran at the 1936 Olympics and then served in the US air forces in the Second World War as a bombardier.  Zamperini was captured by the Japanese after his plane went down in the Pacific ocean in 1943 and spent many years as a prisoner of war, his minor celebrity status sometimes granting him recognition and better treatment, sometimes granting him the opposite.

Now interesting though this man's life may be, I don't really understand why anyone would think it's particularly cinematic.  2 hours and 15 minutes is a long time to drag out a 1500m race, being stranded in the Pacific Ocean and then tortured in a series of Japanese POW camps.  I guess it's meant to be about human spirit, or strength in the face of torment, or maybe a reminder to everyone out there about how terribly the Japanese treated their prisoners of war.  This account of a massacre of US POWs at Palawan certainly provides evidence that there were Japanese prisoner camps where extra-judicial murders took place, but the film's focus on the injury and suffering caused by sadistic guards is interesting.  It seems to turn it into the central theme of the film, one that doesn't really make interesting watching.

Overall then, I'm not really sure what to say about Unbroken.  The true story of the central character's life is interesting enough, but interesting in a way that you might want to read about rather than watch on a big screen.  Jack O'Connell is a good actor and does a good job of looking grimly determined, but that's all that's required of him.  I wasn't really impressed by Jolie's direction; there's a really bland establishing shot at the start of the film of the pilots in the cockpit of Zamperini's bomber, and towards the end she insists on doing a Jesus-shot where Zamperini looks like he's on the cross.  It's very unimaginative stuff.

I think that's the take-home from this review: interesting but unimaginative.  Maybe one to see on the small screen.  Maybe.