Universal Pictures
In 2000, Disney’s Touchstone Pictures released M. Night Shyamalan’s fourth feature film (the second wide release of his career after becoming an overnight sensation with The Sixth Sense), Unbreakable to mostly excellent reviews although audiences who were expecting another Sixth Sense were split (no pun intended) when what they got was Shyamalan’s take on superheroes — long before superhero movies were in vogue (outside of Superman and Batman). That movie starred Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price, a man born with brittle bones earning him the nickname Mr. Glass, who believes that comic books were actually based on real life and that there must be someone out there who is his opposite, someone who could survive anything. Hence he somehow orchestrates a train crash that kills everyone except one man, David Dunn (Bruce Willis) who begins to buy into the theory that he is superhuman, able lift more weight than he ever could before and sense people’s crimes by touching them. But when he touches Elijah and discovers it was he who caused the train crash, David reports him to the authorities and Elijah is committed to a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. (If you haven’t seen Unbreakable in a while, it is pretty imperative that you refresh yourself before taking in Glass.)
Sixteen years later, Shyamalan released the movie Split starring James McAvoy as a man named Kevin who suffers from multiple personality disorder. His various personalities, which they refer to as The Horde, are kidnapping teenaged girls to feed them to The Beast, the most frightening, powerful and dangerous of Kevin’s personalities. One of the girls, Casey, manages to use her own mind games on the various personalities, particularly the nine-year-old Hedwig, to get herself closer to escaping before The Beast arrives. But when he does, he doesn’t kill her because she’s pure of heart. No one knew it at the time, but Split was a sneaky sequel to Unbreakable (even the studio honchos didn’t know until they saw the movie and then flipped out because the new movie was from Universal, but Shyamalan had already cleared the use of Bruce Willis’ cameo as David Dunn with Disney).
With Split being a success, Shyamalan rushed into writing and filming the third film in what he now calls the ‘Eastrail 177 Trilogy’, named after the train that crashed in the first movie. Now, David is on the hunt for The Horde with the help of his son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark reprising his original role) when he accidentally crosses paths with Hedwig. A brief touch gave him a vision of the old factory where four teen girls were currently being held captive and he springs into action. But he must first battle The Beast, who is surprised to find someone as strong as he is, but the battle ends with the both of them confronted by riot police and a doctor, Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who claims she can help them both. Her theory is that they only believe they have certain abilities and she takes them to the same psychiatric hospital that houses Elijah Price. The story boils down to is Dr. Staple correct or do comic book superheroes exist in real life? And if they do, then why are there only three of them?
Glass is turning out to be the most divisive film of the year which is only three weeks old. Audiences are definitely split (again, no pun intended) on whether this movie is good or terrible. I’m in the ‘it’s okay’ camp. For me, the movie started out very gripping, filled with tension as David tracked down the missing teens and battled The Beast. I felt the script did a fairly good job of really making the characters and the audience question whether David, Elijah and Kevin really had special abilities or not. I thought the cast all did admirable jobs in their roles, particularly McAvoy who has to change personae several times in a single scene.
But Glass is far from being a perfect movie. It has some massive plot holes, bad logic and plot-driven conveniences that I was able to overlook, but many people have not (like the lighting rig that will trigger a new personality in Kevin should he get violent or try to escape … he couldn’t just cover his eyes?). Those things aside, I felt that Shyamalan did a nice job of making the train crash from Unbreakable the linchpin of the events in Glass (and he’s confirmed that a woman and young boy that David bumps into outside of a stadium in the first movie are Kevin and his mother).
I know Glass is going to divide audiences (what Shyamalan movie hasn’t aside from The Happening and The Last Airbender which were universally reviled?), but I think if you’ve seen the other two movies (and, again, it really is imperative that you watch Unbreakable if you have not seen it or haven’t seen in since it first came out), you should appreciate what Shyamalan is trying to do here. Or not. Glass may be far from perfect, but I found it engrossing enough to hold my interest and keep me on the edge of my seat until the end.
Glass has a run time of 2 hours 9 minutes and is rated PG-13 for violence including some bloody images, thematic elements, and language.
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