It is not far-fetched to say that Hollywood’s job is to try to consistently come up with fresh ideas for the products it puts out. This does not seem to be the case with the overflow of superhero films that have a bunch of powered people are put together that could easily have been separate films and stories. However, when there is almost two decades between films that are combined, it brings up a whole different set of circumstances, and this is the case with M. Night Shyamalan’s “Glass”.
The third film that’s story follows “Unbreakable” and “Split,” James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, and Samuel L. Jackson return to their roles as Kevin Crumb, David Dunn, and Elijah Price respectively. All three men have been placed into a mental facility together after Dunn and Crumb are captured by the authorities and join Price who is already there. They are put in the care of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who claims to be able to take people who claim to be superheroes and “cure” them. Her methods are seen as outside of the norm, but she is give three days to try her treatments on the three men before the legal system, but Price has plans to join forces with Crumb to escape and Dunn may be the only one to stop them.
This film has a very dark feel to go along with its story, and the visual all work really well here. Willis and Jackson do well, especially in bringing back characters they played nineteen years ago, and Paulson is a fine addition to the cast, but it is McAvoy who AGAIN absolutely steals the show with all of his character’s different personalities from a 9-year-old boy to a redneck. He brings back that ability to just change on the fly, just like he did in “Split”.
I was also impressed by how Shyamalan was able to combine the two previously unrelated films into this, but it did seem to run a bit longer than it should have. I wanted “Glass” and its typical twists and turns its writer/director is famous for to get to where it was going a bit quicker than it did, and I cannot imagine the originally three-hour cut of it did to slow down the pacing that much more. I did enjoy it overall, so I will recommend it as a Saturday matinee showing in the theater.