Unbroken is an upcoming war drama film produced and directed by Angelina Jolie itself. The movie is based on the 2010 non-fiction book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, written by Laura Hillenbrand, .
The film will revolve around the life of Olympic athlete Louis "Louie" Zamperini , a 97 year old man who's very close to Angelina, and died on July 2014.
"It was an extremely moving experience, to watch someone watching their own life," said Angelina. "Someone so physically strong...and they are at the stage where their body is giving up."
The story focuses on the World War II hero Louis "Louie" Zamperini, a former Olympic track star, who survives a plane crash in the Pacific, and spends 47 days drifting on a raft, and then more than two and a half years living in several Japanese prisoner of war camps.
Unbroken's trailer shows an emotional and powerful clip of Zamperini's transition from a troublesome kid to a champion athlete to a prisoner enduring horrifying torture.
In fact, one of the brutalize scenes of the movie made an actor throw up.
Japanese pop star Miyavi, whose real name is Takamasa Ishihara, was cast as a vicious sergeant named Matsuhiro Watanabe. He said that one scene in particular, in which he brutally beats Zamperini, who is played by Jack O'Connell, was so intense it made him throw up.
"It was awful torture for me to hate the other actors-I had to have hatred for them," recalled the 33-year-old rocker and record producer, who's making his feature acting debut in Jolie's film. "When I had to beat them, I had to think about protecting my family. At the same time, I didn't want to be just a bad guy. I wanted to put humanity in this role. [Matsuhiro] was both crazy and sadistic, but also weak and traumatized."
"It's a story that is still painful for my country," Miyavi added. "But she [Jolie] told me she wanted to make a bridge between all countries that had conflict. She was very persuasive." And after filming some of the more violent scenes, "I couldn't stop crying," he admitted.
But Angelina told VF, "I was more emotional than he was," about screening an early cut of the film for Zamperini before he died. "I went in to take care of him-and he was taking care of me."
E! Online said that Unbroken could be her most graphic and disturbingly realistic film yet, because she's not afraid of tackling super-intense subjects, though many of them are quite personal to her.
Starring her hand-picked actors Jack O'Connell as Louis "Louie" Zamperini, C.J. Valleroy as young Louis Zamperini, Miyavi as Mutsuhiro "The Bird" Watanabe, Garrett Hedlund as John Fitzgerald, Jai Courtney as Hugh "Cup" Cuppernell, Domhnall Gleeson as Russell "Phil" Phillips, Finn Wittrock as Francis "Mac" McNamara, Alex Russell as Pete Zamperini, Luke Treadaway as Miller, Travis Jeffery as Jimmy, Jordan Patrick Smith as Cliff, John Magaro as Frank A. Tinker, the film is set to release on Christmas Day, December 25, 2014.
