Glass Review

January 23, 2019 at 4:50am
By Jason Stettner

Glass is the surprising conclusion to a trilogy that many didn't expect to actually happen. It ties up the events of Unbreakable and Split by combining the casts for what was supposed to be an epic showdown. Instead, you get a slow and tedious series of shots that are focused on people just sitting around. There's something more going on here, and it's actually a neat take on the current hero climate in film. That message is muddled however by the very long run time and mostly boring series of events.

Even when it does kick off, the payout is so limited that it goes out with a whimper. The ideas are certainly there, they're interesting and this film uses the characters well. It just doesn't deliver it properly, if this had been about a half hour shorter then the message would have had a deeper impact. Instead, it seems like the sickly cherry on top of one slow ride. They had some really neat characters, the right setting and just enough time to have had passed for perfect connections. Everything fell into place, and then it just went out in a quiet fashion.

Aside from the general pacing problems and slow burn to nothing, there are some great parts. James McAvoy nails his pile of special characters, in this wild individual of multiple personalities. We also get to see Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) and David Dunn (Bruce Willis) clash once again and it was great. The general performances were excellent, supported by great background music and chilling moments. The look into each of the characters, while balancing their past just worked perfectly.

I really wish they wouldn't have spent so much time on them, as we know them and it slowed things down. Not to say the look into what they are wasn't great, it mostly should have just been shortened to get to the point faster. If you haven't watched the other films, you generally get the just of them here. There are some neat extra moments added that build upon the history and it does actually propose an interesting future within this universe. The balance of being a hero, what defines the extraordinary and perhaps something hidden along the way to cause twists at every turn.

The Conclusion

Glass is certainly loaded with potential, poor pacing and a slow build up to little pay off kills it. There's a grand cast of characters here that each do something different, yet complement each other well. Seeing the interactions was great, even though it was rather slow. There are some deeper layers to this film that certainly demand discussion, it's just a shame that the movie presenting them couldn't have done so better.

It really starts to drags in the later parts and even when it starts to get intense, that feeling is minimized. It left things in a rather dreary position, not in terms of any sorrow but in the general thought that nothing too exciting went on throughout. It's one thing to have a long narrative with an exciting conclusion, and another to just slowly fade away. I really liked some parts, but some of the core elements dragged it down. There were great themes, clashed by the constant reinforcement that this is a comic book to movie era.

Glass Review at Theater with DBox Viewing

Rating Overall: 5.5