“Glass” Is M. Night Shyamalan At His Most Fragile

Glass is probably M. Night Shyamalan’s most fragile movie. It is always in danger of shattering from one too many Shyamalan plot twists, from too much incredulous shoe horning the plots of his other movies into the current one.

For a third of Glass it promises to be a Die Hard revival, implying to take Bruce Willis back to the biggest skyscraper in the city for one last rendezvous with an evil genius attempting to prove that comic books are the meta of the universe, only budget restraints thwarting this evil plan. So Glass stays within the loony bin of its existence, setting and characters; never threatening to disprove that everything which is happening is all in its three characters head; a comic creation.

Willis’ character is the dullest of the three. What keeps Glass in its pane is the actorly ham of its two super villains, the only personas with density and some imagination.

Samuel L. Jackson’s titled wheelchair bound character exists in drug induced somnolence for the first third and Jacksonian mf-er menace for the last, pissed off at the PG-13ness of it all and waiting for Shyamalan to finish the exposition so that James Macavoy can do his bidding and evil machinations.

James Macavoy steals Glass with his depiction of Kevin Crumbs 23 flavors of lunacy, impressing everyone with his ability to instantly and flawlessly shift into the next character, almost making every one sad when the final showdown rips him down 22 characters to the dullest one.

Ultimately Glass is defeated by it budget which had only enough for one big mediocre big fight after the director and stars salaries were subtracted. Even two Shyamalan twists leave Glass just a reflection in its own shard.

All photos courtesy of Universal Pictures.