Loading ...Movie Review - Unleashed
User Rating:
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
2005 / 103 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz
A couple years ago, Jet Li and Luc Besson (the writer and director of “Leon: The Professional” and “The Fifth Element”) joined forces on an action movie. The movie was entitled “Kiss of the Dragon”. It sucked. Now they’ve joined forces once again on a movie that serves as something of an apology for that highly flawed, earlier effort. The title of this movie is “Unleashed”.
“Unleashed” has a weird fucking plot. Get this: a mob boss (Bob Hoskins) has raised a boy from early childhood and trained him to be something of a martial-arts pit bull. Jet Li plays the boy, all grown up and ready to kick ass. Hoskins has only to remove Li’s collar and whisper “Get ‘em” in his ear and Jet enters a room and pretty much annihilates anyone standing in his way. Obviously, Hoskins is thrilled with this relationship, as he’s getting all the benefits. And Danny (Jet’s character) doesn’t object because, well, he doesn’t know any better. All he has ever known is living in a cage, eating cold spaghetti out of a can, and beating the living shit out of anyone that Hoskins tells him to.
Then, one day, some people who aren’t that fond of Hoskins decide to kill him. With Hoskins seemingly dead and nowhere else to go, Danny wanders away and finds refuge with kindly, blind piano tuner Morgan Freeman and his adorable, piano prodigy stepdaughter (the almost supernaturally cute Kerry Condon). They show him the softer side of life and teach him to be a normal human being. Of course, Hoskins really isn’t dead. And when the mob boss returns to Danny’s life and asks him to take up his old habits…well, things don’t go smoothly.
“Unleashed” begins with some stunning action sequences, showing us just how amazing Jet Li is with his fists and feet and pretty much anything else. And then it does something that I’ve not seen in any of the three Jet Li films I’ve seen otherwise (okay, I may not be the biggest Jet Li fan): the film requires him to act. Jet taps into reserves of emotion, humanity and sheer sweetness that I had no idea he was capable of. I liked Jet a lot in this movie. I liked him so much that I feel his performance overshadows that of Morgan and Kerry (though Kerry Condon is incredibly sweet in this movie, and I look forward to seeing more movies make use of her obvious talents) who are both very good in this film. His performance does not, however, surpass the raw intensity of Bob Hoskins. Then again, I’ve not seen too many performances that could. I’ve been a Hoskins fan since “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” (one of the first films I remember seeing in a theater) and I must say that this is one of his finest performances ever, and easily his most intense and ruthless performance since “The Long Good Friday”. Jet may be the one who was raised like an animal, but Hoskins IS a fucking animal in this movie. He’s a soulless monster, one of the best villains in recent memory. He occupies the same tier as Gary Oldman did in “Leon”, which is to say that he may not be extremely realistic in this movie, but he’s definitely intimidating. When Hoskins shows up, despite Jet’s amazing martial arts abilities, you’re actually scared for Jet. Yes, that’s how intense Bob Hoskins is in this film. He’s one steam-rolling son of a bitch.
“Unleashed” doesn’t really take place in our reality, but that’s okay. It doesn’t have to. It’s an action movie. And it’s a pretty damn good one. The action scenes at the beginning are a bit better than those near the end, and the resolution of the film isn’t exceptionally satisfying. The characters are well-drawn though a bit simplistic. The good guys are a bit too good and the bad guys are perhaps just a tad too evil…but that’s been one of Besson’s problems, as a filmmaker, since the very beginning. He only wrote this film. The directing duties go to Louis Letterier, who directed one of my favorite action flicks of recent years (that would be “The Transporter”) and who gives the story and characters ample room to develop without short-changing all of the ass-kicking. In fact, the story and characters were so involving and original that I didn’t really mind that there wasn’t all that much of the ass-kicking.
The acting is excellent across the board, the themes of the film are provocative, the plot is unique and the action is pulse-pounding. Despite its simplicity, maybe even because of it (after all, I’m getting tired of all these action movies that practically require you to take notes in order to figure out who’s trying to kill who and why), “Unleashed” is one of those rare action movies that leave you feeling something aside from a simple adrenaline rush.
