Unleashed

October 4, 2005

Rated: R Runtime: 103 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Unleashed is the story of a dog that has been trained to fight on command. As long as he has his collar on, he remains calm no matter what is going on around him. But if you take the collar off, he’s ready to follow instructions and fight to the death. However, this dog isn’t a pitbull, it’s a human. And his bite comes in the form of martial arts.

Unleashed Jet Li plays Danny the dog. He is abandoned at an early age and picked up and raised by Uncle Bart, played by Bob Hoskins. Bart feeds and houses our pup, but he’s mean to him as well and thus makes him mean. Turns out that Bart’s character is a thug with a nice little racketeering business. Wanna borrow some money at a ridiculous interest rate? He’s your hookup. Dont pay it back on time, and he sicks his dog on you.

Enter Morgan Freeman as the blind piano tuner who befriends Danny dog by being kind to him, a new experience for the dog. When the opportunity arises he runs away to the blind man and begins to learn how normal people live. But Uncle Bart wants his muscle back.

This is a fairly complex storyline for a martial arts movie. And there’s the rub. This isn’t really a martial arts movie. It is a drama with a lot of martial arts in it. And as it turns out, this isn’t totally a bad thing. The story is good and the performances are absolutely remarkable. Jet Li is totally convincing in his role as a human dog, he does everything short of lick himself and pee on the floor. And as you’d expect from Freeman and Hoskins, two great actors, their performances are excellent as usual.

But let’s get down to what you guys really want to know. How are the fight scenes? I dare say this is some Jet Li’s best work yet. He’s paired here with legendary fight choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping, and the result is some very creative fight sequences. We are also quite glad they went with the R-rating instead of compromising the fight sequences for the sake of a theater full of teenagers.

We give Unleashed 3 stars, and that is really because of the quality of the fight sequences. The drama was well done, and although it was long and drawn out, it did not put us to sleep. But this is not why we go to a Jet Li movie, and we’re not along as there was a fairly steady stream of people who left this movie early. See it on DVD, that way if you just cant deal with the drama, you can just skip ahead to the excellent fight sequences.

Posted by Billy Bob | Filed Under 3 Stars, Action, Bob Hoskins, DVD, Jet Li, Kerry Condon, Morgan Freeman, R, Vincent Regan