It’s hard to call anyone dying a good thing, but Louis Zamperini’s death last week at the age of 97 almost couldn’t have been timed better to promote ‘Unbroken,’ the Angelina Jolie-directed film about Zamperini’s life. Chronicled in Lauren Hillenbrand’s ‘Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption,’ first Zamperini was an immigrant who became an Olympian in 1936 in Berlin, then he survived 47 days in shark-infested water while being strafed by the Japanese after his plane was shot down during the war, then he lived through daily beatings in a Japanese POW camp. I’m sick of all these heroic biopics trying to make me feel bad. How about one about a guy who was a real alright dude to all his friends, as long as they never asked him to help them move, and one time hit a really nice tee shot?
Anyway, I’m hoping for a war movie and a shark movie all wrapped in one. The film opens Christmas Day, and the Coen Brothers apparently worked on the screenplay (along with Richard LaGravanese and William Nicholson). I never saw Angelina Jolie’s last movie, ‘In The Land Of Blood And Honey,’ but I figure at the very least, she’ll be like the hot girl in high school who always has good term papers because the smartest kids in school are all falling all over themselves to write it for her.
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