The story of Louis Zamperini is pretty awesome. The guy ran in the Olympics in 1936, then went to WWII, then crashed in the Pacific and spent like two months on a life raft, then got captured by the Japanese and spent two years in a prison camp, then forgave his captors and ran the Olympic torch through Japan when the Olympics were in Nagano. The movie, however, wasn’t as great as his life, in my view.
I went with my mother and brother the day after Christmas. I’m glad I saw it, but it’s the kind of story I wish I would have read rather than seen on the big screen. It leaves me a little leery for Wild, because that may be another story that would be better absorbed in book form, I don’t know. Dammit.
Unbroken was mostly a story of survival – surviving bombing runs, surviving in the ocean, surviving the evil warden of the prison camp. I wanted to know more about the guy than his can do attitude. That’s probably why I should have read the book. I think the act of forgiveness and the road to recovery are probably just as interesting, which I’m assuming they just didn’t have enough time to explore in the movie.
I may read the book some day, but I’ve been in a reading rut for about a year now, so it may be a while.