Easily The Best of the M Night Shyamalan Films!

Bruce Willis as a psychiatrist, who is home with his wife one evening when they are startled by an intruder in their bathroom.  The intruder was one of Willis’ patients who had asked Willis for help but apparently Willis never listened.  Willis tries to reason with him but he shoots Willis in the stomach before taking his own life.

The next scenes follow Willis as he is assigned to help a troubled you boy who is about 10.  We suspect it is sometime after he was shot but we are not really sure until later in the movie.  The boy (Cole) has been doing strange things at school like drawing pictures of dead people and telling the teacher that the government used to hang people in the schoolhouse.  Things like this set Cole apart from all the other kids who treat him as an outcast.

Willis first encounters Cole in a church and lets Cole know that he is there to try to help him.  Cole is distrustful of Willis at first but pretty soon Willis is able to convince Cole that he is there to help him.

The picture moves at a slow pace with a few snippets of Cole’s weird behavior coming through.  It is only through about halfway through the movie that Cole tells Willis why he acts the way he does.  Willis thinks that Cole’s explanation is that of a sick mind but later on he will be convinced otherwise.

There are some heartwarming scenes between Cole and his mother (something strange throughout is that Cole’s mother and Willis never talk about Cole – this is explained much later) and the weird way that Willis’ wife seems to be treating him.  Spoiler below:

By the end of the movie Cole will come to grips with his problem and Willis and Cole’s mother will come to new realizations about themselves.

This is a really well made move with great acting and it should hold your interest throughout regardless of its slow pace.