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A good actress can rise above, and Taraji P. Henson levitates above "Not Easily Broken," a movie better suited to a "Can this marriage be saved?" seminar than a theater where some people laughed, hooted or asked aloud the obvious questions.
It's a sudsy, lesson-larded adaptation of the book by Bishop T.D. Jakes. The title comes from a three-stranded cord wrapped around a blissful couple, Dave (Morris Chestnut) and Clarice (Henson), at their 1995 wedding in Los Angeles. The bride and groom each represent a thread, and God is the third.
Life doesn't go as planned, starting with an injury that ends Dave's hopes for a baseball career and an accident that lands Clarice in the hospital, a wheelchair and a funk. That also prompts her strong-willed, overbearing mother (Jenifer Lewis) to move in and meddle.
She isn't the only wedge in their marriage, as a single mother (Maeve Quinlan) supposedly catches Dave's eye. The pair have so little chemistry that they could stand in a pool of gasoline while one lights a match and no sparks would fly.
Although bolstered by good leads and support from funnyman Kevin Hart and the hunky Eddie Cibrian as Dave's pals, "Not Easily Broken" has one twist that is as harsh as it is speedily unrealistic.
Tack on a resolution that seems straight out of the 1950s and you have new wine in old wineskins.
PG-13 for sexual references and thematic elements.
-- Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette movie editor
Two nifty ideas for horror movies collide in "The Unborn" and kind of make a mess. It's no worse than most contemporary genre fare, and the film actually has some well-wrought scare scenes and a few good laughs (some more intentional than others).
Eerie, atmospheric direction by screenwriter David S. Goyer and an above-average cast help. "Cloverfield's" Odette Yustman convincingly flips out as Chicago teen Casey Beldon's nightmares about a sickly boy bleed more and more alarmingly into her real life.
The investigation into what's happening leads to a potentially intriguing story line about horrific Nazi experiments on concentration-camp twins. It gets muddled up with Casey's own discovery about the brother she never knew.
Casey turns to a skeptical rabbi (Gary Oldman, quite good) who agrees to perform an ancient Hebrew demon-banishing rite.
In the meantime, Goyer keeps things interesting by filling the screen with horrid possessed children, bug infestations, snarling dogs (and some people) with upside-down heads and choice references to the films of Stanley Kubrick.
Goyer brings welcome, extra intelligence to these often disposable pop-culture products. That's true of "The Unborn" as well, although his ideas might have been more effectively explored had he divided them between two separate entities.
Rated PG-13 for violence, sex, language and children in peril.
-- Bob Strauss, Los Angeles Daily News
