The Academy Award winning actress Angelina Jolie has taken on a new challenge by directing and producing the new movie Unbroken. Other producers include Matthew Baer, Erwin Stoff, and Clayton Townsend. This movie is an epic drama that follows the amazing life of Olympian and war hero Louis “Louie” Zamperini, played by Jack O’Connell. The movie premiered Christmas Day and produced an astounding $101.4 million in its first weekend with a runtime of 2 hours and 17 minutes and a rating of PG-13.
The movie begins by showing flashbacks of Louis as a child who was teased and beaten by other boys for coming to America from Italy. Often times Louis is chased by police so he had to learn to run faster than most people which is noticed by his brother. After this, his brother who is already on the track team begins to train Louis to try out for the school track team. Once he makes the track team at the school, he continues to travel up the rankings until he is able to qualify for the Olympics. Although Louis isn’t able to take first place in the race, he does miraculously break the record for the fastest lap ever run in Olympics history during the last lap.
After showing all of this, the movie goes back to Louis currently in the army and on a search and rescue mission at sea with several other men on a military airplane. This mission soon turns deadly when the plane loses all engine power on one side, causing the crew to plummet into the ocean. The only three men surviving after the crash, Mac, Phil, and Louis, then quickly make it to the life rafts searching for safety. After spending several days at sea with no food, their hunger begins to take over and they end up trying to eat a bird that lands on their raft. However, this plan does not exactly work because all of the men end up vomiting afterwards. Following almost three weeks at sea, the men think that they are going to be saved by a passing plane, but instead it turns out to be an enemy plane that begins to shoot at them. All the men then jump into the water for safety in spite of the fact that there have been sharks circling their rafts for quite some time. Later on, around day 30, Mac ends up dying in his sleep from the mixture of severe hunger and dehydration. Finally after 47 days stranded at sea, Louis and Phil get picked up by a ship; the only down side is the fact that it is a Japanese ship that picked them up meaning they are now prisoners of war. Once taken to land, they are beaten and then thrown into cells and barely fed for days. After the Japanese get what they think is the right information, they send them off to a detention camp.
On the way to the camp, Phil and Louis get split up and are sent to different detention camps. At the detention camp, the men are made to stand while the head of the camp, referred to as “The Bird” yells at them. They are also made to stand there for much longer due to the fact that the Japanese didn’t want disease in their holding houses if any of the men possessed it. Soon after being housed, the city that is located near the camp gets bombed which meant that the men have to be sent to a different camp. As usual, when the men arrive at the camp they are immediately put to work. Louis ends up getting injured at this camp and is then picked out by the leader of the camp and told to put a giant wooden board above his head and hold it there. If Louis could not hold the board above his head, he was ordered to be shot.
To find out what happens at the end of the movie, you’ll have to see it for yourself. I would highly recommend this movie for all people. This film gives light to how prisoners of war are treated and also how devastating World War II was for all people involved. The movie also shows the story of this amazing man who persevered through so much all to get back to his family.