Angelina Jolie directed this World War II movie from a script by Joel and Ethan Coen, but none of them leaves any sort of signature on the result, a straightforward and entirely commendable story about the triumph of the human spirit, etc. Based on the best-selling nonfiction book by Laura Hillebrand, it tells the story of Italian-American athlete Louis Zamperini, who competed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and later served in the U.S. Air Force as a bombardier against the Japanese. Shot down in May 1943, he and another crewmate survived on the water for 47 days (a third man died) before they were captured and interned in a series of hellish POW camps, where Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) became a favorite whipping boy of Sergeant Mutsuhiro “the Bird” Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara), later named as a high-ranking war criminal. With Finn Wittrock and Domhnall Gleeson.