Word: film
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...film poses a smug challenge: If you don't like our merry little prank, that makes you square and unhip. O.K., we'll bite. This is soft-gore porn, obvious in its strategies, witless in the play of its ideas, absurdist only in its pretense to seriousness...
...movies have always had a problem with race. The first talking film, The Jazz Singer, was, of course, about a white guy in blackface. And don't get me started on Driving Miss Daisy, or the fact that the black guy who played the fourth Ghostbuster didn't get to do much of anything. But recently, Hollywood has been working especially hard to establish two onscreen stereotypes. The first is the Magical African-American Friend. Along with Bagger Vance, MAAFs appear in such films as What Dreams May Come (1998), the upcoming Family Man (co-starring Don Cheadle) and last...
Which brings us to another Hollywood favorite, the Bigot with a Heart of Gold. In Remember the Titans (a formulaic film that soars on the strength of its performances) Will Patton plays a white football coach who at first resists integration, and then befriends head coach Denzel Washington. And in Men of Honor (another formulaic film enjoyable for its performances) Robert De Niro plays a BHG who at first tries to run Cuba Gooding Jr. out of the Navy diver program, and then champions his cause. Gooding's character is a real person. De Niro's is a fictional composite...
...perhaps, for his obsessive interest in Dunn, who, for all his bad luck, enjoys perfect health. And we mean perfect. The guy never even gets the sniffles. He is, to borrow this film's perfectly descriptive title, Unbreakable. Moreover, under Price's possibly prompting gaze, he develops a talent for spotting criminals before they actually commit a crime. Despite his modest demeanor and circumstances, Dunn has the potential to be a superhero working the real-life streets of Philadelphia...
...film is very well played. Willis is good as a depressed man resisting instinctive, inchoate hints that he is not living up to his uncanny potential. And Jackson's ability to play perverse intelligence gets its best outing since Pulp Fiction. Robin Wright Penn is superb as the wife almost defeated by Dunn's inarticulate withdrawals, and young Spencer Treat Clark's hopeful patience with his troubled dad is fine...