Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Glass
Starring: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Genre: Thriller
Rating: PG15
RUNTIME: 129 Mins
We thought we had M. Night Shyamalan worked out.
He once made a great movie (The Sixth Sense), then a divisive one (Unbreakable), then a so-so one (Signs) and then a string of mediocre-to-laughable ones until Split.
Split wasn’t meant to be good because Shyamalan wasn’t meant to make good movies anymore. But it was.
Split was a surprisingly great psychological thriller anchored by a strong, multi-faceted performance from James McAvoy. It, as always with Shyamalan, trafficked in big concepts but kept it contained to McAvoy’s Kevin Wendell Crumb and his 24 personalities and his warren-like prison.
When Split revealed that it existed in the same universe as Unbreakable it was kind of exciting, this call back to a movie from 2000 that was under-appreciated at the time but has gained something resembling cult status now.
Shyamalan says Kevin/The Beast was originally part of the Unbreakable script but was excised before production. And the coming together of two movies made 16 years apart at two different studios is no easy feat.
So now we don’t know what to expect from Shyamalan and Glass is another curveball, but in the wrong direction.
Glass, the sequel to Unbreakable and Split, like so many of Shyamalan’s movies, is wildly-ambitious with a potentially intriguing idea but ultimately let down by disappointing execution.
Set two weeks after the events of Split, superhuman David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is on the hunt for Kevin after hearing reports of his crime on the news. Aided by his now grown-up son Joe (Spencer Treat Clark), David tracks him to an abandoned warehouse.
A confrontation ensues before both are captured by the cops and Dr Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) a psychiatrist who says she specialises in treating people who have delusions of superhero-ness. She also has in her custody the manipulative genius Elijah Price/Mr Glass (Samuel L. Jackson).
It’s a peculiar story choice, to have Dr Staple gaslight the three super-humans when it’s clear to us and to them that they do have these powers – where’s the conflict or tension in that?
Shyamalan says that Unbreakable was marketed as a thriller after the success of The Sixth Sense rather than the superhero caper it was. This time, with audiences in the throes of superhero mania, Glass is proudly out-and-about a comic book movie.
But it’s not like a Marvel-esque romp, laden with irreverent jokes, nor is it like a dour and self-serious DC effort.
It’s very much a comic book movie as made by Shyamalan. It’s visually impressive with lots of stylised shots and lots of ominous foreshadowing but it fumbles in its rush to explore this idea of superheroes and their origin stories without saying much new about it.
The performances here are good, especially McAvoy who, like in Split, is carrying the burden of playing a dozen characters, switching between them seamlessly. Unfortunately, the usually amazing Paulson spends most of her time enunciating with gravity from the centre of the frame.
Willis is underused, as is Jackson, and it’s not really clear what purpose Anya Taylor-Joy’s Casey Cooke or Charlayne Woodard’s Mrs Price is really serving.
Nineteen years is a long time to wait for a sequel that’s so unsatisfying. While it gives the impression that something, a bigger idea, is percolating underneath, trying to burst through, it mostly leaves you wondering if it’s Shyamalan that’s missed the point or if it’s us.
Now showing in: Oasis Juffair, City Centre, Seef II, Saar, Wadi Al Sail, Avenues
Kristian’s verdict: 2/5
