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Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie
Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie

Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie

(PG-13, 137 minutes)

Unbroken is an inspirational story based on a best-selling 2010 biography of Louis Zamperini by respected author Laura Hillenbrand. It is not a bad movie. It's just dull. It says what it thinks it ought to say about the indomitable human spirit, but its homilies sound uninspired and calibrated to what it perceives as an audience eager for reassurance.

It's impossible to divorce the movie from its director, Angelina Jolie. She directed 2011's In the Land of Blood and Honey, which was occasionally possessed of a crude power that suggested a talent for filmmaking. It was an odd but distinctive film, and it took some outrageous risks.

Unbroken does not. It is a safe and shiny movie that utilizes highly regarded professionals. Roger Deakins is the director of photography. The Coen brothers took a swipe at the script. The story is unimpeachably uplifting. And the ultimate effect is like the rich lady who hires a decorator to furnish her house. It's pretty, but it's not art, and it's not even all that comfortable.

In linear fashion, Unbroken tells Zamperini's war story, starting out with him as a troublemaking teen in Depression-era California, the son of striving Italian immigrants. Young Louis is bullied, but he keeps struggling to his feet after being knocked down. This is his defining character trait.

Encouraged by his brother, he takes up running, which leads him to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Next, he's a bombardier (played by Jack O'Connell) on a B-24 in the Pacific Theater during World War II. A rescue mission goes wrong and he's lost at sea, floating in a raft with fellow survivors Phil (Domhnall Gleeson) and Mac (Finn Wittrock).

After 47 days he's picked up by the Japanese navy and plunged into a series of horrors at an internment camp, where he's singled out for abuse by a sadistic corporal (Takamasa Ishihara).

If you know anything about Unbroken, you probably know that Zamperini survives. Because, you know, you can do it. If you just believe hard enough. But it will take more than belief to make this film a winner.

Into the Woods (PG, 125 minutes) The plots and characters of several well-known Brothers Grimm fairy tales -- among them Cinderella, Jack (of Beanstalk fame), and Little Red Riding Hood -- are mixed together with varying degrees of success via Stephen Sondheim's unremarkable Broadway songs in this lavish musical, which starts out bouncy and frivolous then darkens precipitously, both in story line and scenery. With Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine; directed by Rob Marshall.

Song One (PG-13, 86 minutes) Here's Anne Hathaway again, this time in a subdued, earnest romantic melodrama set in Brooklyn's modern folk music scene. She plays Franny, who returns home after a lengthy absence when her musician brother Henry (Ben Rosenfield) is hospitalized in a coma after a car wreck. Finding his notebook, she uses it as a road map to figure out how Henry's life has evolved since she has been away, which brings her into contact with Henry's musical idol, James Forester (Johnny Flynn). Guess what happens next. With Mary Steenburgen, Li Jun Li; directed by Kate Barker-Froyland.

The Hobbit 3: The Battle of the Five Armies (PG-13, 144 minutes) The final installment of this Middle Earth saga focuses on Smaug, a fire-breathing dragon who energized the first film and dominated the second, which ended with the angry creature wreaking vengeance on Laketown. The conclusion shows poor Bilbo (Martin Freeman) looking helpless as the dragon mounts a fiery assault over the lake.

In Peter Jackson's final film of the trilogy, that dragon is dispatched even before the opening credits have finished.

Smaug's death opens the door to the rest of the plot, such as it is. With the dragon slain and their town a smoldering wreck, heroic Bard (Luke Evans) takes the remaining villagers and shuttles them to shelter at Lonely Mountain, now in the possession of the original pack of dwarves led by King Thorin (Richard Armitage).

An elvin army also arrives, led by Thrandull (Lee Pace). Unbeknownst to either of these parties, a massive orc army, led by Azog (Manu Bennett, heavily CGI'd), is also heading toward the mountain, hoping to use its wealth and strategic location to conquer the North.

Oops, that's only four armies. Can't forget about the fifth, led by Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen).

The vast majority of the film's relatively compact running time concerns the battles between these factions, first in group combat, but eventually in a final showdown between Thorin and Azog.

Jackson takes many of the lessons he learned about epic battle scenes in the Lord of the Rings series and applies them here. There's entertainment value in watching the different fighting styles of the opposing armies -- the brute force of the dwarvish soldiers in contrast to the catlike grace of the elves, the desperation of the humans, and the blunt trauma of the orcs, who tend to get beheaded in bunches.

Even if the battle still feels like an afterthought compared to the end-of-the-world stakes of the Rings trilogy, viewers can appreciate the spectacular chaos Jackson portrays, along with the magnificent landscape of his native New Zealand.

MovieStyle on 03/27/2015

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