ANGELINA Jolie came to Australia to direct this film about Louis Zamperini, who ran in the final of the 5000-metres at the 1936 Olympics and after joining the US Army Air Corps spent 47 days in 1943 wallowing in a life raft before being taken to Japan where he endured privations and brutal treatment until World War II ended.

We may be confident about this powerful film’s narrative validity. Laura Hillenbrand’s 2010 best-seller book about Zamperini was a major basis for the screenplay by Joel and Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson. Before Zamperini died last July, Jolie consulted him about his experiences.

Running for 137 minutes, “Unbroken” would have taken no harm from shortening particularly the sequences in which the Japanese used a group of PoWs as slaves carrying baskets of coal to barges. Passages in which prison camp supervisor Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara) inflicts brutal treatment on Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) are simply awful.

Without doubt Zamperini’s story deserves telling. Jolie’s realisation of its multiple sources more than seven decades after its events delivers potent impacts. Its anachronisms and various goofs may irritate purists but they don’t devalue the film’s effect.

The opening passage, a squadron of Liberator bombers striking a target and returning home after taking significant damage, is great filmic stuff, worthy to precede a story of human courage and determination. The film has three Oscar nominations for technical elements.

At all cinemas