In a 12.25 post called “Take…No, Respect The Pain” I asked for reactions to Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken, but more importantly I asked how “the room” felt. “How did it seem to play with Joe and Jane?,” I wrote. “Seriously…I’m asking. Maybe on some level it’s connecting. What do I know?” Well, Unbroken is connecting. $15,592,000 earned on Christmas Day, and close to $50 million expected by Sunday night.
Except half the critics said “nope” and the film itself isn’t, to be bend-over-backwards fair, traditionally comforting or nourishing. It’s a well-made, handsomely captured slog about a guy enduring all manner of pain, trial, deprivation and torture. So something is happening here, Mr. Jones, but what? I think it’s the fans of Laura Hillebrand’s 2010 book plus fans who are looking to kiss the proverbial Jolie glamour ring plus the same people who ten years ago wrapped themselves in the blessed spiritual agonies of The Passion of the Christ.
And yet when I asked if anyone felt tremors in the ground only two readers, “Sams” and “Actionman,” answered in the affirmative. Everyone else navel-gazed. The HE community failed. I’d like explanations, please.