Unbroken: an Intense Account of Historical Events

Unbroken is a powerful and striking movie based off of the true story “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.” This harrowing, true story reveals what we hope is true about ourselves–that we too are unbreakable.

Louis “Louie” Zamperini (played by Jack O’Connell) was once a young boy who believed he was nothing. He had a mindset that he could never achieve great things and that he was weak. With the help of Peter, his oldest brother, Louie began to realize that he had the potential to be great. Little did he know that being “great” was going to turn into becoming an Olympic level athlete and historical figure who told his moving story world-wide.

The movie follows Louie as he gets shot down over the Pacific during World War II, survives weeks at sea, and then his repeated ill-treatment as a prisoner of war in Japan.

My favorite quote from Unbroken is “A moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory.” This sticks with Louie during his whole journey and brought tears to my eyes during a particularly hard scene.

O’Connell does an outstanding job with his acting. When I was watching the movie, I found myself covering my eyes because of how real the scenes looked and how detailed the more crucial scenes were. All around, I was stunned by how the acting reflected the story so well.

However, another actor that really stuck out to me was Mayavi, who played Mutsushiro, the main antagonist who is the commander of the Japanese prison camp where Louie is sent. Mayavi’s composure and change of tone in his voice from being loud or yelling to having a soft and kind voice were the two biggest things that made him stick out to me. He and O’Connell shared a lot of scenes together and their chemistry as actors helped with the realistic image the directors were striving to achieve.

If you are looking for a family-friendly film, this is not it. I would recommend this to only a mature audience. In my eyes, it was intense and cruel and I had a hard time throughout the movie accepting that the events in this story are real and this was a reality for the people during that period of time.

I rate this film a solid 5/5 punches in the face for Louie. I will without a doubt be watching it again in the near future. You can stream this movie on any of the following: Amazon Video, Apple TV, Google play, Microsoft, Youtube, RedBox, Direct TV and Fandango.