Glass (2019) review- by Chris Stuckmann

Full text transcript of the Glass film review

Glass has now had a full weekend to make a bunch of money at the box office, hopefully most of you have seen it as well as my spoiler free review, because this review is going to be nothing but spoilers that you’re warning me to get into every detail of the plot, the ending, all that stuff. If you guys saw my original review, you notice probably that I didn’t grade the film because I felt conflicted. I wasn’t sure if I was on the positive or negative side. I was somewhere on the fence and there was just things about the movie that that bugged me. And I wanted to see the film again with fresh eyes, with zero expectations, just going in, knowing how it was going to conclude and seeing if I liked the film any more. The second time when split ended, it set up a confrontation between The Beast and David Dunn, who in this film becomes known as the overseer. And that was very enticing to me. And so the first twenty, twenty five minutes of this movie gave me just about everything I wanted. I was concerned, though, because the beginning of the film, the first act, felt like how I imagined the movie ending. And I was like, how are they going to maintain this? Because this is so exciting and this is really well done.

And it does take a turn for a more slow burn film, which to me is actually kind of great because I’m a huge fan of Unbreakable and I love the way that movie has a slow burn approach to its characters and how it builds things slowly and how it lets you breathe and think. And it’s just a meditative movie. It really allows you to observe small moments. And I was glad to see Glass bring that back.

I got no problem with them being in a psychiatric ward, being treated for what is a perceived illness. In the case of Kevin Wendell Crum, played by James McAvoy, obviously he has died this dissociative identity disorder.

But one of those identities is extremely powerful and can climb on walls and not get killed by bullets and bend steel. And this doctor, played by Sarah Paulson, is trying to convince all of them that that’s all just a fantasy in their minds, including David, who believes that he is super strong and and vulnerable to a lot of things like illness. But that water is his primary weakness. Elijah Price, played by Samuel L. Jackson, believes that he’s a mastermind and that he has the opposite side of what David has, and he’s the opposite side of that spectrum. I love the idea of putting these characters in a confined space and forcing them to be involved in a mind game that pits them against each other. Psychologically, this is different. You know, this is wacky and weird and just really out there, which is exactly what I want from an M. Night Shyamalan film, even films of his that I didn’t appreciate as much as others. They all don’t feel like the mainstream. They all feel outside of that. It’s something I’ve always appreciated about his movies and it’s why I’ve always championed them. He’s not a filmmaker concerned with the trends of the day. He wants to be the guy who’s the outlier and Glass lives up to that. And I can tell you that on second viewing, I found myself appreciating the movie a lot more because I was able to wipe the slate clean. Anything that I wanted to see, I was able to accept that I wasn’t going to see that and just take the ride. Rockmelon, that being said, the biggest disappointment for me in this movie was the arc for David Dunne.

He doesn’t really have one. His arc is is very similar to his in the first unbreakable and unbreakable. He believes his life to be a certain way. Someone comes along and says, no, your life isn’t like that. It’s not how you thought. Actually, you’re this. And his arc is eventually accepting that and becoming a superhero. And in this film, he believes himself to be a superhero. Someone comes along and says, hey, no, no, no, you’re not a superhero. You’re actually this. And he starts to believe that before eventually accepting that he is a superhero. And so the arc at the very end changes ever so slightly from the first movie, but it just wasn’t very well executed. I didn’t really feel that there was enough weight given to his character. He very much felt like he was on the sidelines. He didn’t really have a lot of dialogue. There was a whole like twenty, twenty five minutes section in the middle where he’s not even there. We see him crying alone once in his cell and then after that he’s kind of gone for a long time. I wish that I had seen more from him because I love that character. I do like what they did with him and his son, Spencer Tracy Clark returning and giving an excellent performance as well. Not enough people are talking about how good he is in this movie, and I want to see him in more roles. I’m so happy that he was in the film and how good he was. But there was sort of like a Batman and Oracle thing going on with them, which I thought was really awesome.

Naturally, James McAvoy is magnificent and his character definitely carries some of the more sagheer portions of the movie. There’s a few new personalities this time that come out. Some of them speak different languages. There’s a great scene where he’s flirting with this orderly, loved it. There’s a lot of great stuff with him. And as I said, he definitely makes the film. Feel like it has something going on when it doesn’t necessarily have as much to do, Samuel L. Jackson barely speaks for the first hour of the movie. In fact, I actually don’t think he does speak for the first hour of the movie. But once his character is introduced as being a presence, great stuff. I mean, there are scenes throughout that were so, so awesome. I loved him in the wheelchair, in the patient property room. And the beast is just killing that guy. And he’s just sitting there watching really strong scenes and the meet up between the Beast and Mr. Glass in that room where he’s trying to convince him to show himself and that his powers really mean something perfect couldn’t have been handled better. It’s really just David’s arc and the twist involving secret society of people who try to keep superheroes from being in the public eye that I didn’t really like that much. It’s not the type of twist that ruins the movie for me, especially on second viewing and seeing Elijah’s plan click into place. And this cult that’s been trying to keep superheroes out of the public eye for all this time kind of gets there.

Just do. But it just felt a bit unrealistic, this idea of them just being in a restaurant. And once enough people leave, the door shuts and now they’re just talking amongst themselves. It just felt like why didn’t they just have like a weird warehouse facility or something that was definitely private? It just seemed a little unrealistic. There are also some plot hole type things in the film. I discussed it briefly in my spoiler free review. The idea of the Beast being restrained by this strobe light makes for some great scenes, but a lot of his personalities are very smart. Patricia and Dennis in particular, one of them should have realized that he could just cover his eyes and not look at that light and then kind of, you know, break out of the door. But that was never really explored. Another major issue is that there is a lot of explaining going on there. There’s a lot of sequences where especially the doctor character played by Paulson just explains things to us, particularly with the twist, like she’s looking at this one of the orderlies just saying what Elijah did. He went through the basement because there’s more cameras when she’s standing amongst her fellow cult members. She’s like, I know what my assignment is. And then she says her assignment and she says why she does what she does. And there’s just things like that where I’m like, OK, I get it.

You’re explaining it to us. Similar to the Twist in the Village, another film of his that was very divisive upon first viewing that more people have come to like nowadays. I appreciate the village. I like how ballsy and weird it is, similar to Glass, for instance. But he has a habit of explaining things when they don’t really need to be explained as much. And I wish he would trust audiences just a little more in that regard. It’s just really sad that David goes through everything he goes through to just be trapped in a facility for a while and then get drowned in a mud puddle. It’s just very anticlimactic. And I wish he had a little more to do than just reach out, touch the doctor’s hand, realize what’s happening. And then he just kind of dies thinking, oh, that’s over with. And it’s like he’s the hero, you know, and he’s just kind of tossed to the side. And in a way, the film kind of agrees with the villains because Elijah’s plan, the main villain of this trilogy, is what eventually comes to play. And it’s viewed as this kind of beautiful moment because the superhuman characters are going to be revealed to the world. And now other people can hopefully come out and say, yeah, I feel like I’m one of them, too. And it’s going to hopefully start a revolution, which is sort of his idea.

The problem is it was treated as a hopeful moment, which is cool.

But since it’s brought about by a terrorist, it feels strange. Like like I actually wish that the film ended on a really sour, sad note instead of making it seem hopeful, like if it if it showed how much chaos and carnage had to happen for something else to happen.

And just got the execution of that right?

I love the idea. I love that idea because it isn’t safe. It’s risky, and I fucking love that. I hate safe movies. And we had a whole fucking year of safe shit just now. I love that the ending of this movie is like, whoa, that’s kind of dark. I just wish that it wasn’t treated as a hopeful moment with all these people holding hands and the music is swelling. But that’s really where my issues end. There’s just certain elements of the execution that could have been a lot stronger to really boost the feel that M. night was going for. There’s a lot of other things I like to I like the fact that there are some unbreakable deleted scenes in here. It really adds something that I’ve never seen done before. The idea of a movie that was shot almost 20 years ago, just having the deleted scenes incorporated in a sequel, because I don’t remember the first deleted scene. I remember the one with young Alija in the amusement park, but I had forgotten about the first one. And when Bruce Willis walks through the door for like a split second, I thought to myself, holy shit, that is the best CGI I have ever seen. Oh, it’s a deleted scene. That’s fucking cool.

I also like Knight’s cameo in this film, explained a question I had from Split because he has a cameo in Splits and Unbreakable and Unbreakable. He plays the guy who is smuggling drugs into the stadium and Willis comes and pats him down. But then in a split, he’s like a security guard, cameraman, wotcher person.

And so in this one, when he plays that same character he mentions, he used to hang out with some shady folks down at the stadium. I was like, OK, so it is the same guy throughout time. It’s not just like a weird error between unbreakable and split and something else that I feel is left up to interpretation but could perhaps be explained more in the future. Is Casey Cooke in this film and what exactly she’s doing?

Because M. Night makes a real point to show a lot of close ups of her hands touching.

James McAvoy and the doctor character even says the power of true love and affection is something that you can show these people. And I was like, oh, shit. So are they saying that she is in some way also special or enhanced in some way, shape or form? It just it was never fully clear. And it seems a little bit open to interpretation, but it’s something worth thinking about.

But easily.

The thing that I love recognising the most on the second viewing and something that really stood out to me was the comic book store scene when linked to the last thing you see in the film, the comic bookstore scene where Casey Cook gets a comic, by the way, that’s the same actor who portrayed the you better not be jacking off to the Japanese comics, I swear to God guy in unbreakable same act. That’s really cool. But he mentions how the first issue of Action Comics had Superman lifting up a car and how that started it all. And at the end of the film, you get that shot of the beast turning a car and flipping it over, which is, you know, starting this origin that hopefully Mr. Glass wants to happen of all these superheroes. And so it was just a nice little through line there that I hope more people can can notice. Now, this movie is better on the second viewing. And I have to say, I’m a little I’m a little annoyed, actually, because Rotten Tomatoes has started to just take people’s reviews and publish them with a good or bad grade without actually checking with the person first. That’s understandable when I give a movie a grade, like if it’s a C plus or below and they give me a rotten review, OK, I get it. You did that. But I specifically said in my review for Glass that I was conflicted and I wasn’t going to grade it yet.

But they still took my review and threw me in with the giant mob pile of rotten reviews.

I’m actually not going to give this film a rotten review, I’m going to give it a positive review. I’m going to give glass a B.

I’m not a big fan of the twist. I’m not a big fan of David Dunn’s arc.

Don’t like how he went out, but everything else in the film, I think is really different. And I like that M. Night Shyamalan is making movies like this.

Do I like everything about this final movie in the trilogy? No. Am I glad that a trilogy like this exists? Fuck, yeah, I am, because it’s different.

It’s not the same. This isn’t another churned out Hollywood movie. M. Night Shyamalan self financed this movie. He self financed, split with the visit. He mortgaged his own house to make that movie. So all of the critics who keep saying things like who’s letting M. Night Shyamalan make movies? You don’t have to have permission to express yourself through an art form.

He’s paying for them himself. You never, never, never, never take someone’s right to express themselves through an art form away, just don’t do it.

That’s when we get into the equilibrium world where art becomes illegal. The movie that like when it came out, I was like, that makes no sense. That’s a stupid, stupid plot.

But now when I watch equilibrium, I’m like, shit, I can actually kind of see that happening.

Nevertheless, Glass is a very divisive movie and in some ways very much so disappointed me and let me down. But on second viewing especially, I found a lot to like about it.

And I am glad to see films like this being made.

And I will continue to look forward to films that Shyamalan makes. Guys, thank you so much, as always, for watching. Look forward to more of you very soon. And if you like this, you can click right here and get stuck lionised.