Unbreakable (2000)

Most people think so. 83% of audiences gave it a thumbs up, by Google's archived audience score. Critics gave it 66%.

An ordinary man makes an extraordinary discovery when a train accident leaves his fellow passengers dead — and him unscathed. The answer to this mystery could lie with the mysterious Elijah Price, a man who suffers from a disease that renders his bones as fragile as glass. Wikipedia ↗

Unbreakable is a 2000 American superhero thriller written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, a grounded, psychological deconstruction of comic book mythology. Bruce Willis stars as David Dunn, a Philadelphia security guard who is the sole survivor of a catastrophic train crash that killed 131 passengers — emerging without a single scratch.

Elijah Price, played by Samuel L. Jackson, a comic book art dealer with a rare condition that makes his bones extremely fragile, contacts David with a radical theory: if someone like Elijah exists at one extreme of human fragility, then someone at the other extreme — someone unbreakable — must also exist. As David reluctantly tests his apparent invulnerability and discovers he also possesses an intuitive sense for criminal activity, he confronts the possibility that comic books are a historical record and that he is, in essence, a real superhero.

Unbreakable was released in the immediate aftermath of The Sixth Sense's cultural dominance, and audiences expecting another twist-heavy supernatural thriller were surprised by the film's deliberate pace and grounded approach to superheroism. Shyamalan staged the entire film in muted, realistic tones, treating David's discovery of his abilities not with spectacle but with the quiet wonder and dread of a man realizing his life has a purpose he never wanted. Samuel L.

Jackson's Elijah was simultaneously sympathetic and sinister. The film earned $248 million worldwide and has been extensively reappraised as one of the most original and thoughtful superhero films ever made.