Unbreakable (film)

Unbreakable is a 2000 American superhero thriller film written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and starring Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, and Robin Wright. In Unbreakable, David Dunn (Willis) survives a train crash with no injuries, leading to the realization that he harbors superhuman abilities. As he begins to grapple with this discovery, he comes to the attention of disabled comic book store owner Elijah Price (Jackson), who manipulates David to understand him.

Shyamalan organized the narrative of Unbreakable to parallel a comic book's traditional three-part story structure. After settling on the origin story, Shyamalan wrote the screenplay as a speculative screenplay with Willis already set to star in the film and Jackson in mind to portray Elijah Price. Filming began in April 2000 and was completed in July.

Unbreakable was released on November 22, 2000. It received generally positive reviews, with praise for Shyamalan's direction, screenplay, its aesthetics, the performances, the emotional weight of the story, cinematography, and the score by James Newton Howard. The film has subsequently gained a strong cult following. A realistic vision of the superhero genre, it is regarded by many as one of Shyamalan's best films and one of the best superhero films. In 2011, Time listed it as one of the top ten superhero films of all time, ranking it number four. Quentin Tarantino also included it on his list of the top 20 films released from 1992 to 2009.

After years of development on a follow-up film, a thematic sequel, Split, with Willis reprising his role as David Dunn in a cameo role, was released in January 2017. After the financial and critical success of Split, Shyamalan immediately began working on a third film, titled Glass, which was released January 18, 2019, thus making Unbreakable the first installment in the Unbreakable film series.

Plot

In 1961 Philadelphia, baby Elijah Price is born with a broken arm and leg, caused by Type I osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare disease that renders his bones extremely fragile and prone to fracture.

In the present day, former star quarterback and security guard David Dunn is returning home to Philadelphia after a job interview in New York when his train, Eastrail 177, suddenly speeds up. He wakes up in a hospital room, unscathed, and the doctors inform him he is the sole survivor of the derailment that killed all 131 other passengers. After attending a memorial service for the victims, David finds a note on his car asking how long it has been since he has been ill and inviting him to "Limited Edition", an art gallery operated by the now-adult Elijah Price. He goes with his son Joseph to meet Elijah. Elijah explains his theory of real-life superheroes, and if he represents extreme frailty, there must be someone "unbreakable" at the opposite extreme. David is unsettled and leaves, but later finds he can bench press 350 pounds well above his expectations. Joseph idolizes his father, believing him to be a superhero, although David maintains that he is ordinary.

David challenges Elijah's theory with a childhood incident when he almost drowned and contracted pneumonia. Elijah suggests that this highlights the common convention where superheroes have a weakness, contending that David's is water. David recalls the car accident in which he was unharmed and ripped off the car door with his bare hands to rescue his girlfriend, Audrey. He feigned injury from the crash to quit football because Audrey hated the violence of the sport.

Under Elijah's influence, David realizes that his intuition for picking out dangerous people in his work as a security guard is actually extrasensory perception. Consciously honing this ability, David discovers that touch contact with people brings him visions of criminal acts they have committed. As people bump into him in a crowd, he senses the crimes they have perpetrated such as theft, assault, and rape. He finds one he can act on: a sadistic janitor who has invaded a family home, killed the father, and is now holding the mother and two children captive. David follows the janitor to the victims' house and frees the children. The janitor pushes him into a swimming pool from the balcony, where he nearly drowns as he cannot swim, but is rescued by the children. David strangles the janitor to death, but finds the janitor has killed the mother. The following day, David shows Joseph a newspaper article featuring a sketch of the anonymous hero, whom Joseph recognizes as his father, and tearfully promises to keep his secret.

David meets Elijah's elderly mother, who explains the difference between villains who fight heroes with physical strength and those who use their intelligence. Elijah asks David to shake his hand, which reveals that Elijah was responsible for numerous high-profile "accidents," including David's train crash, to find his superhero rival. Elijah tells David, "Now that we know who you are, I know who I am". He adopts his childhood nickname, "Mr. Glass," as his supervillain moniker. David reports Elijah's crimes to the police, and Elijah is confined to a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.

Cast

• Bruce Willis as David Dunn, a former football player with superhuman strength and invulnerability who sees the crimes of those whom he touches
  • Davis Duffield as 20-year-old David
• Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price/Mr. Glass, a comic book theorist, and deranged domestic terrorist with brittle bone disease
  • Johnny Hiram Jamison as 13-year-old Elijah
• Robin Wright as Audrey Dunn, David's wife and a physical therapist
  • Laura Regan as 20-year-old Audrey
• Spencer Treat Clark as Joseph Dunn, David's son who believes his father is a superhero
• Charlayne Woodard as Mrs. Price, Elijah's mother
• Eamonn Walker as Dr. Mathison
• Leslie Stefanson as Kelly
• Bostin Christopher as Comic Book Clerk
• Elizabeth Lawrence as School Nurse
• James Handy as Priest
• Chance Kelly as Orange Suit Man
• Michael Kelly as Dr. Dubin
• Joey Hazinsky as Five-Year-Old Boy/Kevin Wendell Crumb
• Dianne Cotten Murphy as Woman Walking By/Penelope Crumb

Writer, director, and producer M. Night Shyamalan makes an appearance as Stadium Drug Dealer. He reprises this role in the 2016 and 2019 films Split, and Glass, which both credit him as surveillance security guard Jai who in Glass jokingly says he used to do shady stuff in the stadium back in his youth.

In October 2018, Shyamalan confirmed a fan theory that "Five-Year-Old Boy" and "Woman Walking By", who bump into David Dunn outside a stadium, are younger versions of Kevin Wendell Crumb and Penelope Crumb from Split, confirmed in the 2019 film Glass.

Production

When M. Night Shyamalan conceived the idea for Unbreakable, the outline had a comic book's traditional three-part structure (the superhero's "birth", his struggles against general evil-doers, and the hero's ultimate battle against the "archenemy"). Finding the birth section most interesting, he decided to write Unbreakable as an origin story. During the filming of The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan had already approached Bruce Willis for the lead role of David Dunn. With Willis and Samuel L. Jackson specifically in mind for the two leading characters, Shyamalan began to write Unbreakable as a spec script during post-production on The Sixth Sense. Jackson recalled meeting Willis in a casino in Casablanca while he was on vacation prior to Unbreakable's production; Willis told Jackson that he had just finished filming for Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense and told Jackson about the new script that was written for both of them.

With the financial and critical success of The Sixth Sense in August 1999, Shyamalan gave Walt Disney Studios a first-look deal for Unbreakable. In return, Disney purchased Shyamalan's screenplay at a "spec script record" for $5 million. He was also given another $5 million to direct. Disney decided to release Unbreakable under their Touchstone Pictures banner. It also helped Shyamalan establish his own production company, Blinding Edge Pictures. Julianne Moore was cast as Audrey, David's wife, in January 2000, but dropped out in March 2000, to take on the role of Clarice Starling in Hannibal. Robin Wright was cast in her place. Principal photography began on April 25, 2000, and ended that July. The majority of filming took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the film's setting.

Shyamalan and cinematographer Eduardo Serra chose several camera angles to simulate the look of a comic book panel. Various visual narrative motifs were also applied. Several scenes relating to the Mr. Glass character involve glass. As a newborn, he is primarily seen reflected in mirrors, and as a young child, he is seen reflected in a blank TV screen. When he leaves his calling card on the windshield of David Dunn's car, he is reflected in a glass frame in his art gallery. Jackson requested his walking stick be made of glass to make his character more menacing. Using purple as Mr. Glass's color to David Dunn's green was also Jackson's idea. Mr. Glass's wig was modeled after Afro-American statesman Frederick Douglass.