Dead again?

>> Unbreakable is bogged down by Sixth Sense expectations

by MATTHEW HAYS

Warning: if you haven't seen The Sixth Sense, don't read this review.

The tantalizing trailers for Unbreakable look suitably spooky. There's Bruce Willis, back again in another film by wunderkind M. Night Shyamalan. This time, he's a security guard who has, by some miracle, managed to survive a devasta-ting train wreck unscratched, while everyone else on board died. Soon enough, he's approached by Samuel L. Jackson, a man who's suffered a debilitating disease which leaves his bones so brittle they break with alarming ease.

Jackson, a comic book aficionado, must know what protected Willis in that fateful train wreck. Could this lead to some kind of clue about Jackson's own condition?

This big mystery is what fuels Unbreakable, a film that's perhaps the most anticipated of the year, after Shyamalan's first feature, The Sixth Sense, broke box-office records, rejuvenated Willis's career, garnered several Oscar nominations and, along with The Blair Witch Project, heralded a horror-movie renaissance.

The Sixth Sense is also what ruins a good deal of Unbreakable. As the trailer indicates, there's some very good atmosphere created. Shyamalan shoots everything in hushed, low-key colours, and the lighting is similarly moody. Willis manages another solid performance, moving through the film like an oddly ghost-like apparition, witnessing, and not entirely a part of, the universe around him.

Then there are the similarities to Sense. What runs through everyone's minds as they were watching the trailers were: what's the catch? The first thought, of course, is that Willis actually died in the train wreck and now he's just in some version of the afterlife. Surely that would be too easy for a brilliant mind like Shyamalan's, to repeat himself so completely. (Yes, for those of you who are sarcasm-challenged, I am using the word "brilliant" with sarcasm; for my money, that Sixth Sense movie and its surprise ending were way, way overrated.) But everything points to Willis's death (don't worry, I won't ruin the crummy ending for you). The film also suffers a few too many similarities to Sense, including a pseudo-cute kid, a tortured marriage and a rather dour kitchen that looks exactly like the one the kid in Sense had.

This feeling of expectation around what the Sixth Sense moment will be consumes our experience of watching Unbreakable. Is he dead? Who is Jackson, anyway? Are they all characters in one giant comic book? Why is Jackson dressed like an aspiring pimp? What's it all about, Alfie?

And when the final revelation arrives, the one we've all been holding our breath for, it turns out to be a massive let-down. True, Shyamalan's in a tough spot: how do you out-do the protagonist-was-dead-all-along finale? But to endea-vour to make another movie with a catch ending was a huge mistake. The films can't help but be compared and one of them (in this case the second one) is bound to suffer. Next time, Shyamalan should settle for a script that isn't punctuated by some ludicrous Eureka moment. Perfectly good scripts exist along these lines and in many instances they don't feel nearly as forced, contrived and empty as Unbreakable does.

Unbreakable is now playing