Unbreakable (2000)

Unbreakable is a 2000 American superhero thriller film written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, alongside Robin Wright, Spencer Treat Clark, and Charlayne Woodard. It is the first installment in the Unbreakable film series. In Unbreakable, a security guard named David Dunn survives a horrific train crash.

Shyamalan organized the narrative of Unbreakable to parallel a comic book's traditional three-part story structure. After settling on the origin story, Shyamalan wrote the screenplay as a speculative screenplay with Bruce Willis already set to star in the film and Jackson in mind to portray Elijah Price. Filming began in April 2000 and was completed in July.

Unbreakable was released on November 22, 2000. It received positive reviews,^[2] with critics praising its aesthetics, the performances, the emotional weight of the story, and the score by James Newton Howard. The film has subsequently gained a strong cult following.^[3] A deconstruction of the superhero genre,^[4] many regard it as one of Shyamalan's best films, and one of the best superhero films. In 2011, Time listed it as one of the top ten superhero films of all time, ranking it number four.^[5] Quentin Tarantino also included it on his list of the top 20 films released since 1992.^[6]

After years of development on a follow-up film, a thematic sequel, Split, with Willis reprising his role as David Dunn in a cameo role, was released in January 2017. After the financial and critical success of Split, Shyamalan immediately began working on a third film, titled Glass, which was released January 18, 2019,^[7] thus making Unbreakable the first installment in the Unbreakable Trilogy.

In Philadelphia in 1961, Elijah Price is born with Type I osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare disease that renders sufferers' bones extremely fragile and prone to fracture. Elijah—who grows up to become a comic-book art dealer—develops a theory, based on the comics he has read during his many hospital stays, that if he represents extreme human frailty, there must be someone "unbreakable" at the opposite extreme.

In the present day, another Philadelphia man, security guard David Dunn, is also searching for meaning in his life. He had given up a promising American football career during his college days to marry Audrey after they were involved in an auto accident. Now, however, their marriage is dissolving, to the distress of their young son Joseph. As he returns home from a job interview in New York City, David's train crashes, killing the other 131 passengers. He is the only survivor, sustaining no injuries. At the crash victims' memorial service, he finds an envelope on his car's windshield, with a card inside bearing the logo of Elijah's art gallery, Limited Edition, that asks if he has ever been ill. David and Joseph meet with Elijah, who proposes to David that he is the kind of person after whom comic book superheroes are modeled and repeatedly pursues the issue with David and Audrey, trying to learn whether or not David has ever been ill or injured. Although Elijah unsettles him, David begins testing himself. While lifting weights with Joseph watching, he bench presses about 350 pounds (160 kg), well above what he could do before. Joseph begins to idolize his father and believe that he is a superhero, although David still maintains that he is just "an ordinary man".

David challenges Elijah's theory with an incident from his childhood when he almost drowned. Elijah suggests that the incident highlights the common convention whereby superheroes often have a weakness. He contends that David's weakness might be water: it is easier for him to drown or choke than regular people. While surveying the stored wreckage of the train crash that he survived, David recalls the car accident that ended his athletics career, remembering that he was unharmed and ripped a door off the car in order to save Audrey. David used the accident as an excuse to quit football because Audrey did not like the violence of the sport.

Under Elijah's influence, David realizes that what he thought was just a natural "instinct" for picking out dangerous people during security checks is actually a form of extrasensory perception. Now consciously honing this ability, David discovers that when he comes into touch contact with other people, he is able to glimpse criminal acts they have committed. At Elijah's suggestion, David stands in the middle of a crowd in Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. As various people bump into him, he senses the crimes they perpetrated, such as theft, assault, and rape, and finds one he can act on: a sadistic janitor who has invaded a family home, killed the father, and is now holding the wife and their two children captive. David follows the janitor to the victims' house, frees the children, and finds their mother, but the janitor ambushes him and pushes him off a balcony into a swimming pool. David nearly drowns since he cannot swim, but the children rescue him. He then attacks the janitor from behind and strangles him, while David remains uninjured, but discovers the mother is already dead. That night, he and Audrey reconcile. The following morning, he secretly shows Joseph a newspaper article on the anonymous heroic act, featuring a sketch of David in the hooded rain poncho he wore while confronting the janitor. Joseph recognizes the hero as his father and promises to keep his secret.

David attends an exhibition at Limited Edition and meets Elijah's mother, who explains the difference between villains who fight heroes with physical strength versus those who use their intelligence. Elijah brings David to the back room of his studio, extends his hand, and asks David to shake it. Upon doing so, David sees visions of Elijah orchestrating several terrorist disasters, including David's recent train accident, causing hundreds of deaths. David is horrified, but Elijah insists the deaths were justified as a means to find him. Calling himself "Mr. Glass", a nickname children had used to taunt him with when he was growing up, he explains that he now realizes his own purpose in life: To be the villain to David's hero. David walks away in horror and disgust. It is revealed that David eventually reported Elijah's actions to the police, with the result being Elijah convicted of murder and terrorism, and committed to a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.