The History Place - "Unbroken" Movie Review

The History Place - Movie Review

Unbroken

By Jim Castagnera
Special to The History Place
4/13/15

At the end of this movie, as the credits go by, we see some video and photos of the real Louie Zamperini and are informed that he died only just last July at the age of 97. This factoid puts me in mind of such 19th century African explorers and Sir Richard Francis Burden and John Speke. Like them, Zamperini seems to be a mythic figure, an iron man of indestructible physical and mental strengths.

Unbroken is Angelina Jolie’s “baby.” She produced and directed. And even though February’s Academy Awards pretty much ignored the film, it’s a history buff’s 'must see' movie.

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In flashbacks that provide some needed relief from his WWII ordeals, we see the Italian-America boy growing up as a troublemaker in California and as the 1936 Olympian known as “The Torrance (CA) Tornado,” who set a speed record for the last lap of the 5000-meter race.

But, of course, the guts of the story is his survival through plane crash, ocean ordeal and prison camp torture. That story begins with Louie serving as a bombardier on a B-24 Liberator in the South Pacific. When his plane goes down, he and two comrades endure 45 days adrift in a pair of rafts. Early on they take heart from Eddie Rickenbacker’s previous three weeks afloat under similar circumstances. Readers wanting to know about the WWI air ace’s survival story can turn to Winston (Forrest Gump) Groom’s new book, The Aviators. Groom attributes Rickenbacker’s survival to the opportune (or was it divine intervention?) arrival of a seagull on the top of his cap. The gull gave Eddie and his crew a little fresh meat and, more importantly, fish bait.

As God sent Noah a dove with a stick in its mouth, signaling the receding floodwaters, He also sent Louie Zamperini a gull. In this instance, we see him and his buddies barfing up the bird meat – different species than Rickenbacker’s? Who knows. The fish bait part of the story is the same. The trio survives not three, but some seven weeks, only to be “rescued” by the enemy.

Thus begins part two of Louie’s great testing. His nemesis is a sadistic Japanese corporal that the prisoners label “The Bird.” Birdie suffers from a variant of short-man’s syndrome. He believes he deserves to be an officer. Consequently, he can’t stand anyone whom he perceives as his better. These he must break. Learning that Louie is a record-holding Olympian, he makes our protagonist the special target of his torments.

The film (and its predecessor book) would need a different name if Louie had been broken. But, of course, he was unbroken. The Bird gets promoted to sergeant and transferred. However, the fun isn’t over. When Saipan is threatened with U.S. invasion, Louie’s prison camp is relocated to homeland Japan, where the POWs are required to load coal trains. Guess who is in charge of the facility. Right – it’s Sgt. Bird.

The prisoners are resigned to the likelihood that they all will be executed if Japan loses the war. Thankfully, they are wrong. One happy day in 1945 they are marched down to the water, where they fully expect to be machine-gunned. But, no, they are there to wash off the coal dust, as American bombers fly in formation overhead and they are informed the war is over.

Ninety percent of the boys who survived this miserable wartime fate probably came home physically and/or mentally crippled. PTSD most likely affected the vast majority. Whatever it was about Louie Zamperini, he was one of the exceptions that prove the rule. True to a promise made to God, he spent the rest of his life as a Christian inspirational speaker and founder of many homes for orphaned boys.

Born again, he explicitly forgave his tormentors, and the lingering nightmares ceased. When he visited Japan to embrace his old enemies, only The Bird, by then a pardoned war criminal, refused to meet Louie. In 1998 at age 81 he carried the Olympic torch in its relay run through Nagano, Japan.

If ever a man snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, he was Louie Zamperini. See his story. You won’t forget it.

Rated PG-13 for war violence including intense sequences of brutality, and for brief language.
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Dr. Jim Castagnera is a Philadelphia lawyer, consultant and writer, whose webpage is https://jamescastagnera.wordpress.com/. His most recent book is Handbook for Student Law for Higher Education Administrators (Revised Edition 2014).

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