Unbroken

"Louis Zamperini’s story is an awe-inspiring triumph-of-the-human-spirit tale if there ever was one. The former Italian-American athlete, who was once one of the fastest high school runners ever recorded and competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, survived 47 days adrift at sea in a raft, and was later captured and sent to a Japanese POW camp where he was repeatedly beaten by a sadistic prison guard."

"The passionate commitment of all involved rarely achieving gut-level impact."

"Jack O’Connell’s, wiry, indefatigable Zamperini holds your attention without effort."

"Jolie has assembled an A-list team, but while her film is perfectly competent, it hardly dazzles."

"What the movie ends up in desperate need of is a sense of life made real and palpable through dreadful, transporting details, not a life embalmed in hagiographic awe."

"Though high-minded and well-intentioned, there’s something faintly stodgy and safety-first about the endeavour."

"Unbroken just piles on the misery without tonal shift, any sense of rise and fall, or any interest in Zamperini’s inner life..."

"It is a handsome film, bleak and dark and elegantly filmed told with a mixture of intensity and something like restraint, even distance."

"A well acted and visualized, if not fully rendered, telling of a fine book and a great life."

"Struggles to bring truth to an unbelievable truth."