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Join Telegram Channel“Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich and Morgan Freeman have a blast,” we wrote about the action comedy when it came out in 2010. As for the end of M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable trilogy, it had completely won over the editorial staff.
Officially retired since his family announced that he suffered from aphasia, Bruce Willis will be the star of the evening on M6. At 9:10 p.m., the channel will offer Redby Robert Schwentke, an action comedy that allowed the leading actor of the Die Hard saga to have a good time, in 2010, alongside Helen Mirren, John Malkovich and Morgan Freeman. However, this is the only strong point of this ultimately not so successful film. Despite the enthusiasm of its actors, the editorial staff of First had quickly grown tired of the spectacle:
Red is released in France in the midst of a crisis over pension reform. It is therefore not certain that union leaders will appreciate this police comedy in which former CIA agents who have been sidelined have only one desire: to return to service. It is difficult not to notice that the scenario – a story of conspiracy within the secret services like we saw a dozen of in the 80s – is, itself, totally arthritic.
Regardless, it's the cast that leads the dance. In total freewheeling, Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich and Morgan Freeman, visibly enthusiastic about the idea of playing 007s on the comeback, are having a blast. We, a little less so because Red quickly runs out of steam. If the tribulations of these gun-slinging grandpas have the real charm of a guilty pleasure, seeing this quartet of excellent actors in a sketchy dad-movie style ends up being boring.
On the other hand, the film offered from 11:15 p.m. was a favorite for our team in 2019. Glassa thriller loaded with to complete M. Night Shyamalan's trilogy started by Unbreakable (2000) and Split (2016), accomplished this mission brilliantly, while offering a meta reading to the audience overfed with superhero movies in recent years. Bruce Willis was touching, back as David Dunn, although his character is the least talkative and expressive of the three: at his side, James McAvoy is as disturbing as ever as Kevin Wendell Crumb/The Beast, and Samuel L. Jackson is at the height of Machiavellianism in the chair of Elijah Price. Here is our review:
The end of Splitan amusing Blumhouse reinterpretation (read: ironic, meta and dirty) of superhero films, had left us KO. We saw Bruce Willis, as hieratic as ever, watching James McAvoy ham it up with a stern eye. Suddenly, in a “Shyamalanesque” shot (camera at mid-height furtively framing the character), the mythology Unbreakable was coming back to haunt us. David Dunn, the Superman near you, was back, ready to face The Beast, the scariest personality of the XXL schizophrenic Kevin Wendell Crumb. All that remained to be integrated into the equation was Elijah Price, the glass man, played by the charismatic Samuel L. Jackson in the original seminal film. Seminal or simply an element of a puzzle whose major pieces would be contained in Glasskeystone of the Shyamalan Universe?
Shyamalan year III
The first twenty minutes are a direct continuation of Split with David Dunn, now supported by his son Joseph (played by the same actor, 19 years later), who tracks down The Beast, the kidnapper of four cheerleaders chained in an abandoned building. James McAvoy once again puts on a show, going from the lisping child to the mistress-wife or the doctoral student with shared pleasure. For his part, Bruce Willis delivers his ten dialogues from the film with his characteristic monotone. The confrontation finally takes place. It turns out to be as spectacular as a shouting match in a Nuri Bilge Ceylan and ends with a proper capture by the police. Welcome to Shyamalan, the real one, the one before the colossal flops and the deceptive but delightful one Split -which had to meet the canons of the Blumhouse style; that of long tunnels of meta and existential dialogues and enigmatic shots where the spectator's imagination is housed.
Comics are me
Now it's time for the asylum, the main setting of Glass in which Dunn and Crumb find Elijah Price, mute and confined to his chair. “My film attempts to amalgamate Superman And One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ” Shyamalan recently told us – read his fascinating interview in the issue of Première currently on newsstands. In fact, all the elements of the asylum film are in place: the disembodied sets, the brutal orderlies, the honeyed sadistic nurse. Not a nurse, sorry, a shrink: played by Sarah Paulson, this Ellie Staple will try to make us, as well as the three thieves, believe that superheroism does not exist, that it is only a figment of the sick minds of her patients. Shyamalan continues his deconstruction of the comic book mythology begun in Unbreakable where David Dunn could not bring himself to accept his condition to which Elijah Price opened his eyes. Was all this false? A simple masquerade resulting from our desire for bravery or our megalomaniac delusions, fueled by the hold-up of comics on pop culture? In the background, Shyamalan tackles Marvel and DC who have perverted the innocent and troop spirit of comics to make them symbols of American omnipotence. In doing so, he places himself as a true guardian of the temple, even if it means annoying – which will certainly be the case.
Supertwist
In the last third, devoted to the three inseparable people's attempt to escape (in spite of themselves), Shyamalan allows himself a twist that is his secret. A twist that is less surprising than it is in keeping with his vision of a world governed by childhood fears and belief in tall tales. Glass is indeed the great meta film we have been waiting for, the commentary on Shyamalan's filmography at the same time as the shattering closing of a cinematic parenthesis whose mysteries and subterranean meanings we have not finished exploring.
Bruce Willis made 22 films in four years while he was ill