Glass (4 Stars)

This is the third part in M. Night Shyamalan's super-hero trilogy that began with "Unbreakable" and "Split". The first two films had different styles. "Unbreakable" was slow with a steady build-up, whereas "Split" was faster paced. "Glass" is somewhere between the two, which surprised me. I expected it to follow in the footsteps of "Split", but it has a lot more subtlety.

David Dunn (Bruce Willis) now prowls the streets as a super-hero, protecting the weak from wrong-doers. He has never given himself a name, so the newspapers have called him different names. He likes being called the Overseer, but he hates being called the Tiptoe Man.

Kevin Crumb (James McAvoy), or rather one of his evil personalities, has kidnapped four cheerleaders. They're being held in an abandoned factory until the Beast emerges to kill them. David finds them first and battles with the Beast, but both of them are arrested and locked in a mental hospital to cure them of their delusion that they're super-heroes... or super-villains. Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), who now calls himself Mr. Glass, is already in the hospital, drugged so heavily that he rarely talks.

Most of the film takes place within the hospital, and we watch the treatment of the three men. The only one who knows how to break out is Elijah, because his super-power isn't something as trivial as great strength or speed; his power is his great intelligence.

There's a lot of talk about comic books, as in "Unbreakable". Elijah sees everything as building up to a real world display of comic book tropes.

As is to be expected from M. Night Shyamalan's films, there are plot twists at the end that I couldn't have imagined, They more than made up for things that made me unhappy in the rest of the film.

I find it strange that the film has received mostly poor reviews from film critics. Maybe it's because they're unfamiliar with comic book tropes. Maybe it's because the plot twists are too radical for them. Either way, I think they're wrong. This is a good film, neatly rounding off the trilogy while laying the groundwork for new films.