Unbroken
Director: Angelina Jolie
Starring: Jack O’Connell, Akamasa Ishihara, Domhnall Gleeson
371 mins; Class 15;
KRS Releasing Ltd

Angelina Jolie’s second film as director, after 2011’s In the Land of Blood and Honey, is an epic, sweeping, old-school movie based on the true story of one man’s triumph over the most vicious odds.

Virtual newcomer Jack O’Connell is the undisputed star and ‘unbroken’ hero of the movie. Louis ‘Louie’ Zamperini was a potential Olympic running star whose track career was put on hold by the onset of World War II.

Assigned as a bombardier, after many successful missions Louie and his crew crash in the Pacific ocean and, together with two of his comrades, he went on to survive 47 days in a life raft before being rescued by Japanese forces and interred in a detention camp. Here, he suffered beatings and all sorts of humiliations for two years before the war came to an end.

Unbroken is a solid prestige picture that hits most of the right buttons, yet falls just short of being an instant classic, for despite being perfect from a production point of view, it comes across a little emotionally distant in its telling despite strong performances from all involved, especially O’Connell, whose name I have no doubt we shall be hearing a lot more of in the future.

Jolie keeps a tight rein on proceedings throughout and displays the flair of a cinema veteran in a number of scenes. The opening scene, in which Louie and his crew are in deadly mid-combat over the Pacific with the Japanese air-force, is a thrilling sequence, photographed and edited to maximum effect.

A solid prestige picture that hits most of the right buttons, yet falls just short of being an instant classic

We are treated to heart-in-mouth sequences both inside and out of Louie’s B-24 aircraft. It is one of many stupendously mounted scenes that pepper the film, capturing the brutality of war, especially the hardships endured during the so-called Pacific theatre of war. The sophomore director displays equal aplomb in the nail-biting moments of the interminable 47 days Louie and his mates spent on the raft.

Up until then, Jolie displays a steady hand in her storytelling and character exposition, the film segueing neatly from the adult Louie at war to his early days as a young delinquent (the young son of Italian immigrants, he often gets into fights and petty theft), to when his older brother Pete discovered and nurtured Louie’s athletic prowess until the days Louie competed at the 1936 Olympics.

And yet, surprisingly, the momentum slows down slightly from the moment Louie is thrown into a brutal prisoner-of-war camp. Jolie does not shirk from depicting the abhorrent treatment Louie is subjected to. The camera firmly captures every taunt, every degradation and every blow he incessantly receives, but despite the physical illustration of what he is going through, the stark visuals do not project his emotions he – and by extension, we the audience – should be experiencing.

Notwithstanding O’Connell’s unwavering commitment to his role, we learn little of what is going on underneath Louie’s ever stoic and heroic exterior. That the scripts boasts the names of Joel and Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson gives rise to great expectations, but sentiments remain steadfastly on the surface and not as complex as they should be.

Furthermore, the Japanese – as represented by the callous camp guard Corporal Mutsuhiro Watanabe – come across as a little one-dimensionally evil despite the decent efforts by Japanese rock star-turned-actor Miyavi.

There are some genuinely – if a little manipulatively so – emotional moments. Recognising they have an Olympic athlete in their midst, the Japanese authorities allow Louie to speak on radio and the heart does kick into gear slightly as his family hears his voice for the first time in a couple of years. And I confess I was sincerely moved at the end credits, when I learned that Zamperini passed away earlier this year aged 97, but these are too few moments in a story that should have many.

That said, if the film does not live up to its promise, it is certainly a worthy tribute to a man who’d said of his ordeal: “I’d made it this far and refused to give up because, all my life, I had always finished the race.”

Jolie and her team are to be commended for bringing wider attention to his remarkable story.