BRUCE WILLIS IN M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN'S 'GLASS' W/ SAM JACKSON

The poster shows the main problem... way too much McAvoy  2019

M. Night Shyamalan never needs to provide a director commentary track for GLASS since the actors do it for him. A two-tier sequel, one for the subtle classic UNBREAKABLE starring Bruce Willis as a security guard who can't be injured, manipulated by title character Mr. Glass, played by Samuel L. Jackson; the other SPLIT, the recent thriller/horror with James McAvoy as a zoo employee serial killer of young girls...

Unfortunately, and despite the title, this is not an UNBREAKABLE sequel. Having AMERICAN HORROR STORY actress Sarah Paulson play a psych-ward shrink with a three-day pass (using two unrealistically inept security guards) to cure this eclectic trio of their supposed hyperactive fantasies, it's really about sustaining SPLIT. And for the audience, having to deal with a killer with multiple personalities is one thing... Being stuck with a hammy British actor showing how damned talented he is, is, well.. hell on Earth... and slowly...

Glass Rates: **

But the lack of action shouldn't be criticized since UNBREAKABLE was all about tense expository dialogue as well: Wherein most comic book superhero movies would cover five or six issues to create a 2-hour story, Shyamalan risked stretching a one-issue origin story, ending where most movies would begin after twenty-minutes of screen-time — when our hero realizes who he is and then kicks into gear. The difference between UNBREAKABLE and GLASS, though, is content and the dragging misuse of it.

While many interesting things happen in UNBREAKABLE, almost nothing happens here until a noisy ending that, while Shyamalan faithfully sticks to his Alfred Hitchcock implied-suspense... for example, keeping the action tightly within the shared perspective of two nurses in a van while Willis and McAvoy fight outside... there's not enough overall tension between these supposed good vs. evil titans. It's all so Jackson's Mr. Glass can continue lecturing the audience about what's happening and why it's happening, having to do with the rules of comic books...

Glass lacks more than Action

It's unfair, really, that one man with twenty-three personalities is pitted against two men with one personality each. And a shame overall because the prologue, concerning Willis's David Dunn acting as a home security vigilante, could have easily been its own movie...

But the wordy writer/director Shyamalan, in making two sequels in one, leaves his best character on the bench while the others (including the psychiatrist; David's son; Glass's mother; and the sole-surviving SPLIT ingenue) spend most of the time... sometimes together but mostly apart... yakking over strategies we continuously hear about more than experience. (SPOILER WARNING FOOTNOTE: The inevitable twist-ending has a posthumous Mr. Glass having downloaded the 11th hour superhero battle for the world to see online, which goes against the doctor's attempt to keep it all a secret, but — while the audience sees the special-effects driven finale broadcast on news stations and cell phones within the movie, wouldn't the film's fictional public merely think they're watching... an effects-driven video?)