After seeing director Angelina Jolie’s solid sophomore feature, “Unbroken” — based on Laura Hillenbrand’s 2010 best-selling biography of Olympic runner and World War II prisoner of war Louis “Louie” Zamperini — the mystery only grows:
Why is Hillenbrand’s astounding work so hard to replicate on film?
In 2003, more seasoned director Gary Ross took on “Seabiscuit.” To not much greater effect. Yes, there were Oscar noms, and the same might befall “Unbroken,” but that’s a different matter.
knows how to tell a yarn. Her books feel historically rich yet deeply intimate. They are rootedly human even when the hero is a thoroughbred race horse.
Or in the case of “Unbroken”: when the hero is a first-generation Italian American kid who goes on to represent the U.S. on a different sort of racetrack and then in war.
British actor Jack O’Connell plays Zamperini once he’s grown up. CJ Valleroy portrays him as a youngster coming of age in Torrance, Calif., getting in hot water and dealing with anti-immigrant bigotry.
The prodding of older brother Pete introduces the increasingly wayward Louie to track. Zamperini competed in the 5000-meter race during Berlin’s storied 1936 Olympics.
During the war, an Army Air Corps bombardier, Zamperini and the 11-man crew of a B-24 crashed into the Pacific. Three survived.
“Unbroken” opens with Zamperini on a B-24, flying over the Pacific about to drop a payload on a target in Japan. The movie flashes back to introduce his childhood and his track-and-field triumphs.
The former becomes fodder for the stories Louie uses to entertain and distract his fellow survivors on a life raft while at sea for 47 days. The latter becomes the focus of malicious camp guard Watanabe as well as Radio Tokyo higher-ups. Zamperini was a prisoner of war for more than two years.
Zamperini died last summer. He was 97. A number of recent profiles speak to Jolie’s fond relationship with the veteran.
One fears that this respect led to a certain kind of caution. Because, although the PG-13 rated film contains a number of scenes of brutality, it feels careful, safe, stately more than vibrant.
The screenplay is the work of Ethan and Joel Coen — along with Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson. Given the Coen Brothers’ far bolder filmography, their touch feels surprisingly faint. Less dim is the vision of cinematographer Roger Deakins (often the brothers’ go-to guy).
“Unbroken” is rife with beautiful (if occasionally too grand) shots. Particularly impressive work comes in the portion of the story that finds Zamperini, pilot Russell Allen “Phil” Phillips (a very good Domhnall Gleeson) and gunner Sgt. Francis “Mac” McNamara (Finn Wittrock) marooned on the life raft, facing death by dehydration and hunger. The images exude heat and lonesomeness. They are the only men in the world anchored to reality by Louie’s tales of home and Mama’s gnocchi.
Japanese rocker portrays Watanabe who zeroes in on Louie like a schoolyard bully would on the weak kid. Only, slight as he is, Zamperini isn’t that. He’s a one-time Olympian. At one point Watanabe offers a perverse interpretation of his sadistic attention. The prison-camp gossip about his makeup seems even more spot on.
Throughout the film, one senses Jolie grasps the beauty of men. This is not a slight. Nor is it a simple achievement. Because I don’t mean handsomeness. Though with a cast that includes O’Connell, Wittrock, Garrett Hedlund as Cmdr. John Fitzgerald, imprisoned at the POW camp, there’s no shortage of that.
I mean the at times elusive wonder of the masculine, where the vulnerability meets durability.
Of course, this and more is captured in the book along with Zamperini’s more piquant zest for life.
In his very fine profile of Hillenbrand in the New York Times magazine, Wil S. Hylton quotes a letter Random House editor Jonathan Karp wrote after finishing the draft of “Seabiscuit”: “In terms of pure narrative, this is the most satisfying story I have encountered in my 11 years as an editor. Reading it wasn’t even work; it was pleasure.”
By the time she finished “Unbroken,” there was little doubt about the story Hillenbrand was capable of telling.
If only it were as easy to celebrate this big-screen version.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
