Unbroken

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Tyler

Louis Zamperini's story is inspiring to be sure, and Angelina Jolie has surrounded herself with the most amazing creative team to help bring it to life so it looks and sounds pretty great. It was odd knowing the whole film was shot in Australia because all I could see was Australia when I was meant to be anywhere but. 

Some exposition scenes early on were a little hard to take, with characters seemingly only speaking in inspirational quotes that be useful later. My favourite segment was easily being adrift on the lifeboat. There's less dialogue and distracting scenery and more good character building and survival stuff. Once we get to the prison camps we just endure watching out lead get beat up until the end of the film. It's pretty brutal and engaging stuff that was hampered somewhat by a finale of captions on a black screen and a terribly cheesy song. 

Japanese pop star Miyavi plays the evil prison camp officer. It's a big performance. And they make him look like Johnny Depp in a Tim Burton film. Really took me out of the film. 

As much as I hate to trivialise a true story I just felt like this whole film is going through the motions of what a feel good war biopic needs to be. I didn't really connect to anything that was happening. Perhaps I'm to jaded.