★★★★☆

All in all Unbroken was a good movie. It could have been a great movie. It is difficult for one as old as I am who has seen as many war movies as I to not think “I’ve seen this movie before.” At least while watching the first third of Unbroken that thought was foremost in my mind.

I did like how Angelina broke up the monotonous often told adrift in a lifeboat with nothing to eat or drink story by bleeding in the story of the boy in flashbacks. The problem was I know I’ve seen that hungry enough to try eating raw seagull bit and the waiting for rain to get drinking water bit many times.

My guess is the Millenial crowd which hasn’t been fed a relentless diet of war movies, World War II in particular, will probably be shocked by the life raft part of the story. Btw, the plane strafing the life rafts twice without managing to hit anyone was a nice touch.

The Survival Kit

What did shock me is the life raft kits not containing a pistol with a few dozen rounds of ammo. Perhaps all officers were supposed to carry their side arms? Nobody in the crew bothered that day. Sending pilots over ocean water during war time and a survival kit not including a pistol to fend off sharks had me thinking “military intelligence.”

Another thing I found rather disturbing was the kit not containing a small cast net for gathering fish. Those things, especially the 4 foot ones, wad up into an incredibly tiny package. In all of the movies I have seen about war pilots stranded at sea in a life raft I had never noticed the lack of a net and/or some other type of fishing equipment. I would hope modern kits have at least the cast net if not something along the lines of the Ronco Pocket Fisherman. In today’s world I would hope they include all of these things as well as a hand operated water desalination device. I guess from this perspective the life raft scenes weren’t a complete repeat of what I had seen before because none of them made me think of this.

Grenades

One other addition would be a couple of hand grenades. Why grenades? For fishing. Maybe it was in They Were Expendable? Maybe it is in one of the PT Boat movies on this list? The cook didn’t have much space for storage nor time to fish. He would throw two hand grenades over the side and whatever floated to the top he netted for supper.

The rest of the movie was excellent. The brutal prison camp life and how these people managed to survive was definitely a story worth telling.

For more movie rental ideas please see list one and list two.