Glass (15)
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Stars: Bruce Willis, Samuel L Jackson, Anya Taylor-Joy, James McAvoy & Sarah Paulson
Running time: 2hrs 9mins
Security guard David Dunn uses his supernatural abilities to track Kevin Wendell Crumb, a disturbed man who has twenty-four personalities in new M. Night Shyamalan movie Glass.
Liverpool FC was, for a while, the greatest team in the land. A confident, attacking team who captured people’s imaginations along with trophies (The Sixth Sense). Then, success would start to taper off. Although far from failures they were not hitting the heights they had just a few years previously (Unbreakable, Signs).
Then as quickly as it started. It stopped completely. The first place turned to second (The Village), second turned to fifth (Lady in the Water). Failure after failure (The Last Airbender, After Earth) until success was but a distant memory.
Blind faith not only went unrewarded, but it was also a punchline and cries of “Next year will be our year!” would be met with remorseless reality (The Happening). Success was now the abnormality and defeat was now routine. There was the odd League Cup victory to puncture the monotony (The Visit) but this was a far cry from when the name was associated with greatness.
Then out of nowhere, Liverpool went on a tear through the Champions League snatching an unlikely victory from what seemed another crushing defeat (Split).
Hope was restored.
The rebuild had begun. Faces from the past were mixed with ones from the present. Striking a balance until finally, it seemed like THIS IS OUR YEAR. Success wasn’t just expected it was pre-ordained. Then Steven Gerrard slipped and it all fell apart again (Glass).
Having rebuilt from ridicule, Shyamalan again slips up when he is handed an open goal with closing off the trilogy of arguably his most loved – and his most surprising – movies. But instead, he delivers an undisciplined mess.
18 years ago Unbreakable was a “comic book movie” before we had the chance to define what that meant (the first Spider-Man was still two years away). Here, burdened with that knowledge, Shyamalan moves away from everything that made his original stand out.
McAvoy now aware he is in a comic movie, strips away all the menace he had in Split and instead shifts comically between a lot of samey voices like Robin Williams in The Birdcage. Despite being the titular character, Jackson is given nothing to do past twitch his eye and explain how what the audience has just seen is tenuously linked to comic books.
The end of Split was a genuinely stunning moment that sparked the thought that maybe it was time to believe in Shyamalan again. Sadly, much like Liverpool, it’s the hope that kills you.
Glass hits Irish cinemas this Friday 18th January.
2 out of 5
- Andy McCarroll
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