Wantanabe: Miyavi
Phil: Domhnall Gleeson
Fitzgerald: Garrett Hedlund
Mac: Finn Wittrock
Cup: Jai Courtney
Universal Pictures presents
a film directed by Angelina Jolie. Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen and
Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson. Based on the book by Laura
Hillenbrand. Running time: 137 min. Rated PG-13 (for war violence including
intense sequences of brutality, and for brief language).
The story of Louis
Zamperini, an Italian American Olympic athlete who served his country as a
bombardier in the Pacific Theater of WWII and was captured after surviving for
47 days at sea only to suffer the torments of a prisoner of war camp in Japan,
is certainly the stuff of Hollywood. His story and life are testaments to what
Tom Brokaw called The Greatest Generation. Zamperini experienced more in the
first quarter of his life than many ever experience in a lifetime. While the
life is great, the movie leaves much of it unexplored in detail and emotions.
We meet Zamperini on a
bombing run. As the plane approaches its target, the pilot hands over all
control to the bombardier. From this point until the moment the payload is
delivered, the bombardier has total control over the plane and fate of its
crew. The audience experiences a harrowing approach, with artillery exploding
all around the plane as the crew waits on the bombardier to spot the perfect
target and patiently deliver. In this case, Zamperini delivers a perfect
payload at a price as the plane is damaged and the pilot must limp it back to
base without breaks for a landing on a short runway.
Director Angelina Jolie
delivers a spectacular war sequence here, explaining the operating procedures
of a bomber and its crew through example and a brief introduction of the
characters held within. It is tense and invests the audience immediately in the
fate of the crew and Zamperini. As the wartime scenes continue, we learn of the
friendship held between Zamperini and the pilot Russell ‘Phil’ Phillips, played
by rising star Domhnall Gleeson. Phil is a religious man and Zamperini tries to
understand faith but lacks his own.
Throughout these war
sequences Jolie scatters flashbacks to Zamperini’s childhood and life before
the war. We discover he was a troubled youth, fighting bullies and authority
figures for the prejudices shown against his Italian heritage. His parents are
immigrants. His mother only speaks Italian. His brother translates. His brother
also sees the dangerous path his younger sibling is dancing around and steers
him toward running as an outlet for his aggressive nature. Eventually Zamperini
becomes the fastest high school runner in the nation and wins himself a trip to
the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. As Jesse Owens stunned the world winning four
gold medals in the face of the Nazi host country, Zamperini surprisingly took
the lead for the American athletes in his event, the 5000-meter. Although he
did not medal, his sites were set for the 1940 Olympic Games in Tokyo until
they were canceled due to the war.
Unfortunately, these scenes
intended to flesh out the extraordinary life Zamperini lived leading up to the
war are merely sketches designed to deliver the facts but lacking an important
human connection. This is surprising considering the talent involved in this
screenplay. With Oscar winners Joel and Ethan Coen (“Fargo”), and Oscar nominees
Richard LaGravenese (“The Fisher King”) and William Nicholson (“Gladiator”)
adapting Laura Hillenbrand’s bestselling book, you’d expect a masterwork. Alas,
much seems to be missing from this screenplay. There is an isolation to
Zamperini’s character that is never explained. The screenplay focuses so
intently on his World War II experiences that all else in his life seems lost
in the mix, including most human connections with other people in his life. His
time at the Olympics seems staged more to impress that the Nazis were running
it than to show what an achievement it was for him. There is no dialogue spoken
by Zamperini throughout the Olympiad sequence.
Only once Zamperini’s bomber
crew is forced to ditch their plane in the ocean due to mechanical issues while
on a rescue mission does the movie really seem to move into a more personal
experience. Surviving for 47 days with his friend and another crewmember,
Zamperini is shown to have real personal connections with other people for the
first time in the film. This sequence fleshes out his friendship with his
lifelong friend Phil and show him working through adversity and tension with
the other survivor, Frances McNamara. This is the only sequence in the film
when we really get a sense of what Zamperini feels about his situation and the
people who surround him. When he is rescued by the Japanese and separated from
Phil, the movie once again fails to establish relationships in the POW camp.
Jack O’Connell distinguishes
himself as Zamperini. He gives a powerful performance despite the emotional
limitations of the script. During his interment, he gets on the wrong side of a
guard, Mutsohiro “Bird” Watanabe, who would eventually find himself on General
MacArthur’s list of 40 most wanted war criminals in the Japan. Japanese musician
Miyavi is effectively cold and heartless as the tyrannical warden adding just
enough of a glimpse into his damaged psyche to suggest multiple dimensions.
No comments:
Post a Comment