Unbroken Movie Analysis

Unbroken shares the struggles of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic athlete who enlisted in the U.S. air force as a bombardier during World War II. In the movie, Zamperini and his older brother run on their school’s track team, during which he quickly becomes the fastest in the state of California, and runs for America in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. On a mission to rescue missing marines, Zamperini’s plane experiences engine failure, leaving him and the other two survivors to float adrift on the Pacific Ocean for 47 days. During this period of time they face many dangers on the open seas, such as being shot at by Japanese planes, sharks, storms, and one of the crew members even falls victim to starvation.
Zamperini and his remaining partner Russell

The strong emphasis on moral character during this time likely influenced his family, who punished him as a child for being an unruly disgrace. Zamperini began running to more efficiently escape law enforcement, as he frequently stole and drank liquor as a teen during Prohibition. Proceeding Louis’ birth, the Zamperini family had recently immigrated from Italy, seemingly due to the economic troubles that eventually aided the rise of Benito Mussolini and Italy’s involvement in World War II. This lead many people to distrust Zamperini, calling him slurs while chasing and beating him throughout his adolescence

Any omissions from Zamperini’s account of his experiences can be justified by the lack of time allowed in a movie adaptation. While each event in the movie corresponds to a true event, many aspects of history are absent from the tale. The movie presents Louis Zamperini’s experience in the POW camp as physically painful and exhausting, Zamperini himself claims that he “could take the beatings and the physical punishment… but it was the attempt to destroy your dignity, to make you a nonentity that was the hardest thing to bear,” (Berkow). In Unbroken, Zamperini’s psychological state is only ever portrayed before arrival at Omori Detention Center. The entire POW camp experience leads the audience to believe that Zamperini maintains courage and hope throughout his capture, while in reality, after he returns to America he is affected by post traumatic stress disorder and falls into