Shyamalan’s Glass never manages to hit full stride
Glass is beautifully shot and well acted, but fails to make believers of the audience
Half full, half empty or just broken? How you view Glass, the latest from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan, may have a lot to do with your expectations. If you came to see more characters from James “multiple personalities” Mcavoy of 2017’s Split, you won’t be disappointed.
His performance deserves at least three supporting actor nominations and an MTV Movie Award, for best scene stealing from oneself.
On the other hand, Elijah Price, a.k.a. Mister Glass (Samuel L. Jackson), spends much of the movie comatose, locked in a wheelchair in a windowless room in a secluded wing in a psychiatric hospital — in Philly. Sure, he’s a criminal mastermind, but he takes a long time to get his monologue on.
Most of the screen time goes
to Bruce Willis as David Dunn, reprising the role he created 19 years ago in Unbreakable. In that movie, the sole survivor of a train wreck engineered by Glass, gradually learns that he has superhuman powers. Since then, he’s been moonlighting as a vigilante, aided by his son, Joseph. Played by Spencer Treat Clark (also in the original), the kid operates as a cross between sidekick Robin and butler Alfred to David’s Batman.
Glass is being marketed as the third part in a trilogy, bringing together characters and elements of Unbreakable and Split. They include Anya Taylor-joy as a high-school student kidnapped by one of Mcavoy’s personalities in Split, and aided in her escape by another. She retains an unhealthy interest in the patient, who winds up alongside Glass and David in the same mental hospital, after a police takedown.
New to the franchise, and claiming to be an expert in people who think they’re superheroes — do they give out degrees in aberrant crusader psychology? — is Sarah Paulson as Dr. Ellie Staple, who stops in at the sorely understaffed hospital to convince the protagonists their superpowers might just be powers — the equivalent of someone who can lift a car during an emergency.
As such, Glass might qualify as the first non-humorous meta-superhero movie — “they got it wrong in the comics,” someone crows at one point — and hence the best in a field of one.
Shyamalan does what he can to put together two tonally different tales, but the results don’t always mesh neatly, and it feels at times as though one subplot gets put on ice while we deal with another. (You can be sure he’ll tie up loose ends with a twist or two in the final act — his own superpower.)
It is beautifully shot — consistently dark and ominous without being murky — and well acted, but ultimately somewhat narratively frustrating, with so many notions about motivations and abilities raised and then forgotten. One entire story element turns out to be a red herring for audiences and characters alike, and contributes to the feeling that the movie never quite hits its stride.
“I urge you to look past the capes and the monologuing villains,” Mister Glass remarks at one point, but of course this just forces our attention on such things all the more. And in a world already crowded with avengers, suicide squads and leagues of justice, movies need to make a stronger case than Glass does for why we need another.