Unbroken (2014)

For Veterans Day, I picked the first new-to-me war movie I found on Netflix. I did not know that it was directed by Angelina Jolie and co-written by the Coen Brothers, but those facts would have increased my curiosity.

In 1943, Olympic runner Louie Zamperini (Jack O'Connell) is serving as a U.S. Air Force captain when his plane gives out over the Pacific. For nearly half the movie, he and the other two crash survivors, Phil (Domnhall Gleeson) and Mac (Finn Witrock), are holding out on rafts. Then they get taken as POWs, which is a worse situation in some ways, particularly under the war crime-level command of "the Bird" (Miyavi).

We get a few flashbacks in the first act, seeing how Louie (played in adolescence by C.J. Valleroy) went from a minor delinquent to a record-breaking sprinter. As it happens, he had expected to be in Tokyo for the Olympics but winds up there for a very different reason. The main relevance to his present is that the Bird disproportionately picks on him partly for his celebrity status. I suppose it also explains his resilience, which in turn explains why this true story got published as a book and then committed to screen.

This is one of the few war flicks I've seen with an unambiguous focus on a single character. After all, Phil and Mac don't appear in flashbacks, and we lose track of them when they get sent to another camp. As before, the individualism helps me care, even if Louie's survival is almost a foregone conclusion.

Personally, I like the castaway portion of the movie slightly more than the prisoner scenes. The three men struggle for food and against despair and imminent madness, with credible acting. Their faces look hideous after weeks. But they're not terrible jerks, and they never resort to cannibalism.

I'll understand if you'd rather skip ahead to their rescue. I'll also understand if you don't want to watch a movie where every Japanese character is an enemy, even without political incorrectness. But in the end, it's pretty uplifting. I'm glad I made my choice.