Thursday, January 17, 2019

Glass - Another Proof of How Visionary M. Night Shyamalan in Completing an Unusual & Intelligent Trilogy

I read somewhere months ago about this movie being made, which was a sequel to Split that my wife and I saw two years ago. To be honest, I was not that enthusiastic at first because it was not really my favorite film and the ending was something which I thought a bit too weird. Only until I finally saw the movie Unbreakable which was said to be its predecessor that I could understand the ending better and more intrigued to see this third film, just to see how it would all be connected and resolved. Without further ado, below is more on the movie.

Brief Story Line

Set 19 years after the events in Unbreakable, David Dunn (Bruce Willis - 12 Monkeys, Death Wish remake etc) still continued his vigilante act accompanied and supported by his now adult son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark - The Last House on the Left, Mystic River etc). On the other hand, Dennis with his multiple personalities (James McAvoy - Sherlock GnomesAtomic Blonde etc) was still terrorizing the city by kidnapping young girls. David and Dennis life would soon intertwine and became a lot more complicated when they also met with Elijah Price aka Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson - The Hitman's Bodyguard, various Marvel movies etc) in the psychiatric hospital under the care of Dr. Staple (Sarah Paulson - Ocean's 8, The Post etc).


Meanwhile, the surviving victim from Dennis' last abduction, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy - Marrowbone, Thoroughbreds etc) seemed unable to be completely free from her experience and was still having thoughts of Dennis whom she believed was just sick. All of these people, including Elijah's mother, Mrs. Price (Charlayne Woodard) would later on be entangled in something extraordinary.

How would everything turned out? Find them all in this interesting and intelligently done psychological thriller with a twist.

End of Brief Story Line

As mentioned above, after watching Unbreakable, my appreciation to this whole story had totally increased. So I saw this movie with high anticipation. And my God, this film was really amazing to my opinion. From the start when we were shown David's capabilities again and when he finally met with Dennis, it was very awesome! And everything became even more fantastic when they both met with Mr. Glass.

The two previous movies were all psychological thriller which would translate to lots of thrill from psychological point of view. But the third movie actually added element of actions which made it more suspenseful and intense. The main attraction of this movie was the ability of James McAvoy to portray so many different personalities. I stated in my previous post of Split that 23 personalities were just too many, but in here I think almost all were shown which I gotta say, done so convincingly by McAvoy. His capabilities of showing off multiple characters with different expressions, accent and body gesture were totally astounding.

The film's title Glass was referencing to Samuel L. Jackson's character which was introduced first time in Unbreakable and I believe M. Night Shyamalan wanted to focus on him this time around. To me personally it was a great move as Mr. Glass was really amazing as the master mind, even though confined to his chair. Btw, Shyamalan did a great thing in here when he was able to link things from the previous movies into this third film, making me and my wife in awe of how genius he must have been to thought of ways to do so. It was the twist that we did not see coming and it made me admire him more. And look out for his brief cameo in this movie. (Shyamalan was famous for making various out of the box movies with some of them amazing and popular till now such as The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Village and few others). 

Another factor that I thought was wonderful in here was the musical score. Lately I have been noticing that music would be a great addition to a movie. This movie was the perfect example. Sometimes there was a sense of creepiness which was due to the background music plus the intensity in certain scenes. And the sound effects were surprisingly optimized in this film giving us further appreciation as well. For a movie of more than 2 hours duration, surprisingly it did not feel too long to me. Unlike its 2 predecessors, this time no introduction was necessary and it was purely the build up to the ultimate finale. A great ending to a thrilling trilogy to my opinion. I doubt that Shyamalan would make a 4th part movie but it could potentially lead to films or series in the same universe. Who knows? Oh, there was no mid or post end credit scene in this film, so if you have been holding it for the whole movie, you could immediately leave your seats.

Overall, me and my wife were entertained by this film. This is a movie that definitely you have to see the first and second one to understand it. And if you have seen Unbreakable many years ago (it was a movie from year 2000 afterall), I recommend you to see it one more time to refresh your memory and to be able to appreciate how visionary Shyamalan is. Do not believe what critics say about this movie as I think they over analyzed it. This is an enjoyable film if you are fans of Shyamalan's works and psychological thriller. Obviously if you prefer a more action type film, this would not be to your liking. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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