What the movie “Unbroken” meant for me

From left, McNamara, Phillips, and Zamperini in “Unbroken.”

My fascination with Louie Zamperini has finally come full circle.  I went to the movie “Unbroken” last night.

I’m not going to revisit the details of my personal interaction with the WWII hero here, but the nutshell is that I met and interviewed Louie in his Hollywood home in 2012.  It will give you more context to read the story of that meeting first before continuing with this article.  Go HERE.  (Also, here’s the first blog I wrote about Louie and “With the Old Breed” author, E.B. Sledge.)

Finished?  OK, good.  Now you understand that when I walked into the Regal Hollywood Stadium 27 Cinema in Nashville last night with my wife, Holly, and our two older kids, Sam and Ava, I had a different set of expectations than most casual movie-goers.  To be honest, I’ve spent several months trying to manage these expectations in the face of so much promotion for the movie, interviews with director Angelina Jolie, etc.  I didn’t plan on writing a review, but several of my friends have demanded it, so this is my attempt. For the record, I’m not a movie reviewer so cut me some slack.

For me, the theme of the night was emotion.  Apparently, I had a lot of it bottled up inside.  I was essentially a 2-liter emotional Diet Mountain Dew and somebody dropped a Mentos down my throat.  No joke.

The coming attractions were interminable.  Legs shaking, I ate half of my popcorn before the opening credits and never noticed. Holly was in a similar state.  As the Universal Pictures logo appeared and the music began to swell, she leaned over and hissed into my ear, “I’ve never been so nervous before a movie in my life!”

The picture opens with a squadron of B-24 bombers approaching their target: the enemy-held South Pacific island of Nauru where the Japanese mined phosphate for their explosives.  What ensued was a beautifully constructed and filmed sequence of the bombing run and the battle that Louie’s B-24, “Superman,” had with Japanese fighter planes.  It was a great beginning and for me, it served the same role that the opening sequence of the first “The Lord of the Rings” movie did.  It gave vision to the pictures my imagination had been providing me for so long. And when Louie’s name was first mentioned — one of his crewmates referred to him as “Zamp” — a wave of chills ran from my toes to the top of my head. Louie had finally made the movies!

As I watched scene after scene unfold, I was bombarded by competing feelings of immense pride and vague disappointment. Pride in that I had actually sat in this man’s home as he told stories to me alone, had shaken my hand, and called me by my name. Disappointment in that the movie was merely a skillfully constructed skipping stone that arced across a vast, mile-deep life, only touching the surface every so often. In my logical mind, I knew that it was impossible for anyone — maybe even Spielberg — to do cinematic justice to Laura Hillenbrand’s ming-boggling book.  I knew that!  But I hoped anyway.

Segmented into scenes, the picture is masterful in places.  As every movie critique seems to agree on, Jack O’Connell is fantastic as Louie.  Domhall Gleeson, I thought, was a perfect Russell Phillips, and Finn Wittrock was heartbreaking as the tailgunner, Francis MacNamara.  The photography is amazing and the musical score is fine (though I thought it could’ve been much better). I thought the musician and first-time actor, Miyavi, did an admirable job as “The Bird,” Louie’s sadistic prison guard, but was miscast.  He wasn’t nearly physically imposing enough for me.

Not that she is waiting with baited breath for Mark Johnson’s approval, but I’ll give it up to Angelina Jolie for even attempting to make this movie.  I think the term that’s being used quite a bit is “noble.”  It was a noble attempt.  However, I think there was a helluva lot of low-hanging emotional fruit left on the vine.  How could we not see a more detailed reaction of Louie’s parents to his radio broadcast?  Why give his family such a lame welcome from the crowd when he arrived home? Why not give more time to Louie’s separation from Phil, his best friend who he had just spent 47 days with on a raft?

What about the other incredible stuff that was left out?  Louie meeting Hitler after his 5,000-meter Olympic race and stealing a Nazi flag, for example.  Or Louie and his fellow POWs seeing the distant Hiroshima mushroom cloud from their camp?  And, of course, the obvious one: Louie’s amazing conversion to Christianity and his subsequent forgiveness of his captors.

I know, I know.  She couldn’t include everything. I get it. It just seems that Jolie was so concerned with keeping things noble and respectful, she didn’t allow us, the audience, the satisfaction of enjoying the “over the top” drama that was ripe for the picking. I mean, what was Louie’s life if not over the top?

So this is how I see the movie. It is a beautiful, artistic, two-hour and 20 minute introduction to Laura Hillenbrand’s book. Because if you really want to be blown away by the story of Louie Zamperini, you’ve got to read the book. That’s all there is to it.

One last personal note.  With all its flaws, the movie got to me in an entirely unexpected way.  I guess because I’ve invested so much time and emotional energy on these very real characters, watching their hardships on screen knocked me on my butt.  I wept through much of the last third of the movie, so much that Sam and Ava were shocked into silence for a while after we left the theater (and that’s quite a trick). They had never witnessed this in their dad.  Ava held my hand as we walked out and said the perfect thing to me: “Daddy, I’m so sorry that Louie died.”

“Me, too, Sweetie,” was all I could get out.

I can’t claim that Louie and I became great friends or anything.  I was only with him for a couple of hours, and he probably forgot me immediately.  But I feel blessed that God placed him in my life’s storyline, if just for a moment.

Time to move on…