Glass, again reminds me why I (and you) should never judge a movie by someone else’s review or opinion of it. I purposely missed out on this movie after reading and seeing all the negative reviews and opinions about it and was truthfully sadden because of how great Unbreakable and Split were. At the time, I wasn’t on a movie plan that lets you watch three movies a month for $20, so to spend $18.50 for a movie that was so widely panned and take time away from other things, wasn’t going to happen. But I should have.
Glass was a good movie. It wasn’t great, possibly due to the lack of action in the movie, but I didn’t find it boring and I was thoroughly entertained by it. I was fascinated with what I was watching and enjoyed almost every moment of it. I can only assume most critics or movie fans were looking for a lot of action set pieces throughout the movie and instead got a movie about the psyche of its characters and lots of exposition. The ending was a little weird but there’s a lot to this movie. So I understand its rating, but I think expectations killed this movie.
<Spoilers to Follow>
The movie starts with the continuation of James McAvoy’s “The Horde” character, which by the way, is possibly an Oscar worthy performance of an actor playing a character, terrorizing four cheerleaders he just captured in a factory. The man goes through his different personas, Hedwick (a nine year old looking for social approval), Patricia (a calculating and evil woman), the Beast (an animalistic super villain) and around five to seven other personalities with the ease of how we choose clothes to wear. And it’s completely believable. You literally can see the difference in his voice, posture and mannerisms when he goes to a different persona.
We then go to our hero David Dunn, reprised by Bruce Willis who has continued his fight against people who do wrong. He’s currently stopping “bad guys” while trying to find and capture The Horde with the help of his son from Unbreakable, now all grown up as his “man in the chair”. Together they come up with an idea of where to find him and they luck out.
The two stars battle and get captured, which then starts our true movie, where our “hero & villain” are psychiatrically treated, along with Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr. Glass, with a disorder that makes the believe they’re not super, just ordinary men with specific talents that allow them to achieve what seems to be impossible feats.
The psychiatrist, played by Sarah Paulson, then begins to try and convince these characters of what is really going on with them all while Mr. Glass plays out his masterplan to expose the world to what he believes to be true, …that super powered people exist.
<Spoilers End> I’m not sure if my low expectations helped but I definitely enjoyed what I saw. I would’ve loved more action scenes and the Shyamalan twists aren’t anything special but I’ll tell you what, I wouldn’t mind seeing Glass again or owning it in my collection to watch sometime at home. Give it a shot if you haven’t seen it. I’m telling you, if you keep you expectations in check, it’s worth your time.