If you’re a fan of SAS Rogue Heroes but have never seen Jack O’Connell‘s other WWII drama, Netflix are giving you the chance right now – and it’s already trending in the UK top ten in the UK chart.
Unbroken, the 2013 true story of Louie Zamperini, would be remarkable if it just covered his sporting career (he was an Olympic athlete who set records in the 5000m event) but it’s his wartime experiences that made for such a compelling story.
Zamperini (played by O’Connell) was on a search-and-rescue mission in 1943 when he was shot down over the Pacific. He and two others managed to make it to a life raft; after 47 days in shark-infested waters, only two of them were still alive when they were captured by the Japanese.
That was just the beginning of their hardships.
Domhnall Gleeson plays his fellow survivor ‘Phil’ Phillips, and lost so much weight for the role that he reported that even his eyeballs shrank.
“Getting toward the dehydration phase, I had to wear these contact lenses, because their eyes were red,” he told Huffington Post. “[They] stopped fitting my eyes, because I was so dehydrated and had lost so much weight that everything had changed. But we were still trying to screw them in there.”
Zamperini was systematically tortured by the commandant of the POW camp he was sent to, and his endurance in the face of hardship proved to be an inspiration to the men around him and a constant provocation to the guards who wanted to break his defiance.
Universal Pictures
The movie has an impressive pedigree: it was written by the Coen brothers, Richard LaGravenese (The Horse Whisperer) and William Nicholson (Gladiator), and directed by Angelina Jolie.
Entertainment Weekly called it “moving, admirable, and occasionally exhilarating”, while Hollywood Reporter called it “an extraordinary survival story”.
Unbroken is available to stream on Netflix
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Editor, Digital Spy Chris has over 25 years’ experience as a writer and editor, having worked as a journalist covering TV and movies since the ’90s. Starting out as a TV listings editor at the Press Association, he was quickly hired by the nascent Heat magazine, where he rose to become Senior Editor, interviewing the likes of Simon Cowell, Boris Johnson and Paris Hilton. Over the years he has written about entertainment with clarity and wit for Heat, Elle, Q, The Telegraph and of course Digital Spy, and has served many times as a judge in the Royal Television Society awards. He has written and recorded a novelty single with Lord Lloyd-Webber, written scripts for the National TV Awards, made Noel Edmonds cry, accidentally punched an Inbetweener and stolen a small piece of rubble from the Battle of Hogwarts movie set. (They can’t have it back.) LinkedIn