Unbroken

Angelina Jolie directs the harrowing story of Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell), real life Olympic runner and American soldier shot down over the Pacific during World War II. Zamperini wound up doing a grueling stretch at sea on a lifeboat until he and his co-survivor Phil (Dohmnall Gleeson) were picked up by Japanese soldiers and put into prison camp, where the real hell began. Jolie's film shows Zamperini going through a nasty amount of torture at the hands of the camp commander, Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara). In fact, some of the stuff Zamperini endured, like an entire prison camp population having to punch him in the face one at a time, seems like it would have to be embellishment. (Nobody could survive all those haymakers in a row.) Still, the story is an uplifting one, and Jolie made a good-looking movie. The script was co-written by the Coen brothers along with Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson, based on a book by Laura Hillenbrand. The real life Zamperini died in July, 2014. The film acts as a nice tribute to his courage.