A wave of frustration
Film wades too deeply into hagiography
BETHANY HAMILTON: UNSTOPPABLE ★ ★ out of 5
Cast: Bethany Hamilton
Director: Aaron Lieber
Duration: 1 h 39 m I hated myself for not liking Unstoppable more than I did. It’s certainly not the fault of its subject, Bethany Hamilton, a 29-year-old pro surfer who not only survived having her arm bitten off by a shark in 2003, but went right back in the water and started winning competitions against twoarmed competitors.
I also don’t want to blame director Aaron Lieber, who not only has a love of the sport — he’s made two surfing docs prior to this one — but a clear respect for Hamilton. But respect has a way of tipping into hagiography, and that seems to be what’s happened here.
Everything about Hamilton’s post-bite life is shot through a rosy hue that can’t be entirely due to the Hawaiian sunlight.
Her fellow surfers are a uniformly supportive, admiring, egoless bunch, even when she snatches victory from them. She has a cherubic infant who looks like he went through hair and makeup before each loving, perfectly framed family scene.
Shots of her postnatal training have the slick look of a corporate video.
One thing that comes through from the earliest (pre-bite) footage of her is that this is a driven woman. She was driven to surf. After her miraculous return to the sport, she was driven to play the part of the aspirational survivor the world clearly wanted her to be.
But there was a tiny voice in the back of my head asking: What if this polished production isn’t a film about her being driven to surf? What if it’s just her driven to be filmed?
For another look at Hamilton’s story you can watch 2011’s Soul Surfer, which cast a young Annasophia Robb in the role of the devout Christian athlete. Honestly, it’s not a great film either, but it wears its emotions on its sleeve, and I knew where I stood with its manipulative drama. By the time Unstoppable came to the underwater wedding video of Hamilton and her husband, I wasn’t certain whether I was watching a doc or a commercial.