Unbroken
Universal Pictures | Release Date: December 25, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
59
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 48 Critic Reviews
Positive:
25
Mixed:
22
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierDec 22, 2014
When you get through it, though, you can’t help but feel uplifted by this tough-skinned movie that can stand with the best muscular wartime dramas in the American movie canon. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedDec 17, 2014
Put this one at the top of your must-see list. Angelina Jolie might not, in my opinion, have yet reached the heights of the acting profession, but with this passionate, inspired, technically awesome and profoundly exciting chronicle of the life of Louie Zamperini, she rises to the top rank of first-class film directors in a male-dominated field overcrowded with hacks. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsDec 27, 2014
If you can take it, Unbroken will lift you like the classics of adventure cinema. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 24, 2014
Jolie has an army of craftsmen in her corner, notably camera poet Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men). But it's her vision that gives Unbroken a spirit that soars. In honoring Louis' endurance, she does herself proud. Read full review
83
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 23, 2014
There is a genuinely epic quality to Unbroken, cribbed from masters and capably traced. That's really all this inspiring story needs. Read full review
80
TimeRichard CorlissDec 30, 2014
If the Unbroken needle stops at Impressive and doesn’t quite rise to Enthralling, it’s because Jolie stints on exploring the doubts that tortured Louis nearly as much as Watanabe’s punishments did, and whose details so enriched Hillenbrand’s biography. Read full review
80
Total FilmKate StablesDec 1, 2014
Jack O’Connell’s, wiry, indefatigable Zamperini holds your attention without effort. Read full review
77
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeDec 1, 2014
Ultimately, the strengths of Unbroken far outweigh its flaws. Read full review
75
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanDec 23, 2014
Unbroken may not exactly be mired in sanctimony, but it’s standing, almost up to its ankles, in an unhealthy sense that its subject — about whose simple humanity the film otherwise goes to great lengths to illuminate — is a candidate for sainthood. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 23, 2014
Jolie's account is mostly accurate but coldly clinical. The story is effective in relaying Zamperini's narrative but lacks both the gut punch one often gets from prisoner-of-war narratives and the full catharsis one expects at the end. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnDec 1, 2014
Jolie keeps the narrative afloat thanks to first-rate craftsmanship, a few well-honed moments of bonafide suspense, and a terrifically restrained Jack O'Connell in the lead role. While it only hints at the sweeping epic that never fully materializes, Unbroken offers further proof that Jolie's directorial instincts pass muster alongside her other talents. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 27, 2014
A rousing old-fashioned yarn with numerous exciting set-pieces and an uncomplicated hero you root for all the way through. It’s entertaining throughout and made with a high level of technical skill. If made 40 years ago, it would have been a leading Oscar contender and a huge hit, whereas today it’s a bit “meh” in both categories Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 23, 2014
It is a harrowing journey, and an inspirational one. But, as director, Jolie takes far too long to tell it, particularly in such a conventional manner. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 1, 2014
A great true story is telescoped down to a merely good one in Unbroken. After a dynamite first half-hour, Angelina Jolie's accomplished second outing as a director slowly looses steam. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 24, 2014
Zamperini’s life story is genuinely inspirational, but the movie seems fashioned as a standard-issue profile in courage, with Zamperini, after a troubled youth, transformed into an almost saintlike figure. He would have been every bit as inspirational, even more so, without the halo. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyDec 17, 2014
It's moving, admirable, and occasionally exhilarating. What it's missing is the one thing that could always be counted on with Jolie as a star: the spark of danger. Read full review
67
HitfixDrew McWeenyDec 2, 2014
When it comes to this particular story, I find myself unconvinced in the end. Unbroken looks like the real thing, but evaporates upon closer scrutiny. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoDec 24, 2014
It’s one of those inspirational Hollywood dramas about which there isn’t anything "overtly wrong" with it. It’s well-cast, it looks great, it has that intense centerpiece in the raft, and it certainly conveys a true story worth telling. And yet I keep coming back to that beautiful sunrise that opens the film. It’s just too damn pretty. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 24, 2014
Unbroken stirs a moviegoer by default; it’s an astounding story of human endurance that has been brought a little too safely to the screen. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 23, 2014
As directed by Angelina Jolie, it is occasionally powerful, with soaring visuals. It also is, however, stately and slow to the point of tedium. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyDec 23, 2014
A beautifully shot, well-acted, and worthy-to-a-fault Second World War survivor story that only intermittently achieves the kind of emotional impact for which it aims. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldConnie OgleDec 23, 2014
The bigger problem is that neither Jolie nor the script bothers to flesh Louis out as a fully formed person with faults and fears and regrets, which keeps the film from ever capturing you emotionally. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 22, 2014
Unbroken is an ambitious, sometimes moving film that suffers from a little too much self-conscious nobility, and far too many scenes of sadistic brutality. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 22, 2014
Rightly, Jolie didn't want to tell the man's entire life story. But as is, at too-convenient dramatic junctures, the screenplay darts back into flashbacks of Zamperini's childhood or young adulthood, when we should really be sticking with the crisis at hand. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundDec 16, 2014
The film's chief misstep is taking its title too literally, and ultimately depicting Louie as an indestructible, and thus largely inhuman, superhero. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 24, 2014
What the movie ends up in desperate need of is a sense of life made real and palpable through dreadful, transporting details, not a life embalmed in hagiographic awe. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 24, 2014
With what we see on screen weighted too much toward pain and too little toward redemption, this is a film we respect more than love, and that is something of a wasted opportunity. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 24, 2014
Jolie gets the dirty/ennobling job done. If the narrative is finally unsatisfying, it’s because the last vital chapter — the way in which Zamperini was able to have a life after years of unspeakable cruelty and the dashing of his Olympic hopes — is signaled in a couple of title cards before the closing credits. Unbroken proves that Zamperini could take it and make it — but make what of it? Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottDec 22, 2014
As glossy and well-produced as Unbroken is, it doesn't stray too terribly far from Hollywood convention. In fact, its very story structure is so traditional that it's mirrored by Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper." Read full review
60
Time Out LondonCath ClarkeDec 1, 2014
Jolie has assembled an A-list team – Roger Deakins behind the camera, the Coen brothers in charge of the script - but while her film is perfectly competent, it hardly dazzles. Read full review
60
EmpireIan NathanDec 1, 2014
Lavish and sporadically powerful, Jolie's POW biopic may have just enough gravity to entice the Academy, but struggles to bring truth to an unbelievable truth. Read full review
60
The GuardianAndrew PulverDec 1, 2014
Though high-minded and well-intentioned – as well as being conceived on an epic scale – there’s something faintly stodgy and safety-first about the endeavour. Read full review
50
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanDec 27, 2014
We don’t see his alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder after coming home, the decay of his marriage, the vengeful hatred that led him to strangle his captors in his nightmares. Nor do we see his conversion to Christianity after a 1949 Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles, an event he credited with saving his sanity, marriage and perhaps his life. Read full review
50
Portland OregonianJeff BakerDec 27, 2014
Those who watch Unbroken, Angelina Jolie's movie about Zamperini's life, only have to suffer for a little more than two hours, but it's a cruel and unusually harsh punishment. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 24, 2014
The title isn’t “Broken,” so there’s not much doubt of the outcome. But it’s certainly regrettable, because this long and increasingly sluggish film version of the Laura Hillenbrand book celebrates an American life of singular heroism. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 23, 2014
One of these days, Angelina Jolie might very well direct a great movie. She has a rare talent and intense concerns and interests. But first she is going to have to suppress some self-defeating impulses that have now twice taken potentially effective films and rendered them ridiculous. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle SmithDec 23, 2014
Unbroken, is a cinematic scrapbook, a collection of well-composed scenes practically cut and pasted from “Memphis Belle,” “Chariots of Fire,” “Life of Pi” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Unlike those other films, though, Angelina Jolie’s second effort as a director is more a series of similar events than a story, and lacks an underlying message except that torture hurts. Read full review
50
Village VoiceAmy NicholsonDec 23, 2014
Unbroken wants it all: the big cinematography, the close-up grit, the postcard flashbacks, and the grisly Götterdämmerung that earns directors awards. But it aches for a lighter touch -- the facts of Zamperini's life more than stand on their own. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenDec 23, 2014
As Zamperini, Jack O’Connell is the film’s strongest asset. The actor holds our attention from beginning to end, making us care deeply about the man’s fate instead of becoming an empty icon of stoicism. Read full review
50
The DissolveTasha RobinsonDec 22, 2014
Unbroken just piles on the misery without tonal shift, any sense of rise and fall, or any interest in Zamperini’s inner life, beyond his catchphrase, “If you can take it, you can make it.” Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubKeith UhlichDec 22, 2014
Moral and spiritual triumph lie at the end of this hellish gauntlet, but though Jolie is shooting for Christ-like passion and redemption, she only ends up slathering one man’s very real, very morbid struggles in the usual reductive “greatest generation” sentiment. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 22, 2014
Unbroken stumbles into most every movie of the genre in ways that suggest she (Jolie) hasn’t figured out how these things work. Suspense and pathos evade her as she turns an admittedly unwieldy biography into a dull, perfunctory and truncated film. Read full review
50
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezDec 2, 2014
Respectfully presented, Unbroken is competently made and even has a sequence or two that’s impressive, but it’s ultimately very familiar and eventually draining. Read full review
50
VarietyJustin ChangDec 1, 2014
A bit embalmed in its own nobility, it’s an extraordinary story told in dutiful, unexceptional terms, the passionate commitment of all involved rarely achieving gut-level impact. Read full review
40
CineVueJoe WalshDec 24, 2014
With Unbroken, Jolie fails to captures Zamperini's life, and she focuses too much of what he endured and how he survived such suffering, crafting a lacklustre and dull film about an incredibly remarkable man. Read full review
40
The New YorkerDavid DenbyDec 22, 2014
An interminable, redundant, unnecessary epic devoted to suffering, suffering, suffering. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyDec 1, 2014
The film settles into a Forrest Gumpian groove that doesn’t glorify the human spirit so much as sap it. Read full review
38
Philadelphia InquirerDavid HiltbrandDec 27, 2014
Unbroken is a grueling endurance test - for the audience just as much as for its cutout champion. Read full review
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