Back before he was writing about killer plants and destroying beloved cartoon franchises, there was a time when M. Night Shyalmalan was a pretty legit director.

All right, everyone knows the guy has some talent, even if his work has taken a major dive in the last few years, and his 2000 film “Unbreakable” proves it.

It’s the story of a man named David, played by Bruce Willis, who is the lone survivor of a massive train accident that kills hundreds of people, but leaves him completely unharmed.

He is contacted by a rather eccentric rare comic collector named Elijah, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who has a rare disease called osteogenesis imperfect, which makes his bones very brittle.

Elijah is convinced that David’s escape was no coincidence, and that he is, in fact, a real life superhero.

The story goes on to deconstruct the concept of superheroes, villains, superpowers and how their dynamics would actual fit into the modern world.

This has been done before in different ways, with shows like “Heroes” and the classic graphic novel “Watchmen,” but this is a different kind of film.

It’s very quiet and understated, with long periods without a lot of dialogue. The colors are muted, and it all has a quietly gritty, real-world feel to it.

Willis and Jackson play out-of-character roles, with Willis as a rather quiet security guard and the usually badass Jackson as a man who can hardly move without serious injury.

I don’t want to say much about what goes on, because it has one heck of an ending (before we knew the end to every Shyamalan movie), and it makes viewers think about all the superhero stories they have read in the past.

It also deals really interestingly with the idea of people realizing that they are in a work of fiction and just going with it, living their life like their life is a movie instead of the real world.

This all sounds sort of confusing, but trust me, it makes sense once you have seen the whole thing and are at least a bit familiar with the genre.

Anyone who knows my taste in movies knows that I like movies that sort of play with traditional archetypes and story concepts, and this is one of my favorites for the superhero genre, which is even more relevant today than when it came out.

Unfortunately, “Unbreakable” sort of slipped through the cracks of all the other superhero movies, but it is more than worth checking out. To remember what once was and maybe one day could be.

As long as there is no sequel to “The Village”…