Unbreakable (2000)

I'm not the world's biggest fan of superhero stories. I don't have anything against them - they were popular enough when I was a kid growing up. But I never got really deep into the comic book scene. To be honest, I think vigilante warriors fighting justice in spandex is a little bit goofy. But I like when superhero stories address serious issues. My favorite superhero has always been Batman, because his story is dark and gritty - he doesn't even technically have any superpowers. I also like the X-Men, because the idea of a new generation of mutants, each with distinct powers (instead of one lucky guy against a series of wacky villains), is fun to think about, plus their struggle for acceptance among the normies has socially significant corollaries in the real world, which is cool.

But, amid the current boom of superhero movies being pumped out of Hollywood, my favorites are movies like The Watchmen, and Kick-Ass, which aren't straight superhero movies, but somewhat meta, self-conscious looks at the superhero phenomenon. They examine humanity's desire for justice, and need for superheros, by cleverly exploring what it would be like if normal people took on the mantle of vigilante justice, and how that would play out. And that critical examination of human nature is more interesting to me than your average story about some dude zapped by gamma rays, who then has to juggle a social life (and romance) with saving the world from every megalomaniac-of-the-week he encounters.

Unbreakable is even more in that serious, meta-vein; it posits the question, what if the superheros in comic books were just an exaggeration of a rare phenomenon that occurs in real life? Enter middle-aged security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis), who, after miraculously surviving a fatal train crash with no injuries, begins to realize that he may not be so average after all. Though it takes some prompting from a lifelong comic book geek named Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), who has a rare disorder that renders his bones brittle as glass, and who has spent years looking for his mirror image on the opposite end of the spectrum - a man with super strength.

In spite of the science fiction influences, it's a very down to earth story (no spandex or flying here), and David Dunn's melancholic search for a purpose in life is something that even non-superheros can relate to. Coming in the wake of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable is extremely clever, and sensitively filmed, proving that M. Night Shyamalan is a master director and storyteller, even if he did fall into a rut in the ensuing decade, and become too dependent on the shocking twist endings that his audience came to expect from him. But Unbreakable is as good as any of his movies, and a true cinematic masterpiece in my opinion, so if you haven't seen it, you should definitely give it a watch - whether you like superhero or comic book movies or not.