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film reviews by Vasiliy Zaitsev

M. Night Shyamalan, director of Unbreakable (PG-13), is a risk-taker and an artist - so why the hell is he allowed to make movies?

Didn't Shyamalan realize that his rich, patient story development, his beautifully framed shots, his subtle yet poignant directorial guidance of the actors would be as interesting to a modem audience as my dictionary is to my dog?

Unbreakable harkens back to an age when people had attention spans and believed that movies - or "talking pictures", as it were - were carried on the power of their imagery and the skill of their actors.

But please, Mr. Shyamalan. Such days are long, long, long gone.

The story: Elijah Price (Samuel Jackson), chronically ill, is the opposite of David Dunn (Bruce Willis), who never seems to succumb to sickness or injury. Price, fueled by a lifetime of reading super hero comics, believes that by surviving a catastrophic train derailment, Dunn has proven himself suprahuman.

Unbreakable is noticeably missing any vampires, any extraterrestrial with big guns, or Julia Roberts.

Gentle readers, a movie lacking any of these three elements may leave you angry and confused, wondering what the strange colorized images on the big screen in front of you mean. It's all right. Armor yourself with a nice chianti. Sneak a bottle into the theater under your coat. I give you permission.

As has become Shyamalan's trademark shtick since The Sixth Sense, the plot leads to a surprise twist ending, and Unbreakable's twist halfway works - a trick that few movies ever pull off fully successfully. One may leave the theater recalling one's Freshman English Lit class where the teacher discussed rising action and climax, leaving one to wonder where exactly Unbreakable's climax fell.

But what the heck.

The rest of the movie more than makes up for this; and anyway, afterwards you can get on with your life, leaving the theater tipsy yet slightly more soulful, to face the inevitable onslaught of much suckier Hollywood productions.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 squinting, soulful Bruce Willis faces.

Video Recommendation

A merry tale of the jolly days under Stalin in Mother Russia, The Thief (R) will leave you weeping like an infant and cursing the existential torment that is the human condition.

Katya (Yekaterina Rednikova) is a war widow struggling to keep her boy, Sanya (Misha Philipchuk), fed. A practical woman, she is not beyond hooking up with a man whom she hardly knows to achieve this end. After a random romp with Tolyan (Vladimir Mashkov) on a train, he, Katya, and Sanya unite into a makeshift family.

Tolyan says he is a soldier returning from the Eastern Front. But after renting their first communal apartment, Katya learns that her new lover is not what he claims. He is a career thief

Tolyan's thievery technique is straightforward: befriend the suiternates in the communal housing unit, and then one night, offer them tickets to the circus. Assuredly, the entertainment-starved paupers will all go, leaving their meager valuables unguarded and ripe for the plunder.

To Tolyan, pawning stolen silverware beats toiling in the state widget factory any day. But Katya is torn - stay with a thief, or leave him, destroying the semi-bond Tolyan has formed with her son. Tolyan teaches Sanya the infinite, international truth that: if you are willing to fight to the death for the cigarette, odds are you will beat your opponent for that cigarette.

Unless you speak Russian, you have to read the subtitles -Deal with it. This movie is exceptional.