Li Springs Violent Unleashed

Racketeer and enforcer Bart (Bob Hoskins) has a not-so-secret weapon to make clients pay up. It’s his dog; a mangy, haggard, brutally violent mongrel of a beast trained to obliterate (and eviscerate) any individual his owner demands. All Bart has to do is take off the dog’s collar, unleashing him upon a world not even remotely ready to withstand its devastation.

Here’s the twist: Bart’s dog is actually a man named Danny (Jet Li), an Asian orphan the pudgy old Brit has trained since childhood to be a single-minded enforcer. Dressing him in rags, barely teaching him English and housing him within a iron-barred home made of steel, Bart knows a good thing when he’s got it, and after rousting a local jewel merchant things are about to get a heck of a lot better. You see, a purveyor of underground gladiator-style combat has seen Danny in action and he’s willing to pay thousands of pounds to have Bart’s mutt fight in his twisted arena. It’s a dream come true for Bart, easy money that will lift him out of the racketeer business and into a new semblance of respectability.

All is ready to go until Bart’s car is attacked by a group of gunmen. Somehow, Danny emerges virtually unscathed, ultimately managing to make his way to the workshop of a blind American piano tuner, the only person in his life who’s shown him kindness, named Sam (Morgan Freeman). Sam takes the wounded man into his home, introducing Danny to his stepdaughter Victoria (Kerry Condon) and doing his best to get him accustomed to civilization. Together, the three of them become a uniquely multi-ethnic family, each supporting the other in a pursuit of emotional and sociological happiness. But when Bart unexpectedly returns to reclaim his animal, will Danny return to his life of violence and misery or will he risk putting newfound loved ones Sam and Victoria in danger from the venomous gangster?

Unleashed is a wicked, ferociously feral B-grade martial arts melodrama that stings like a right hook to the jaw. Written by Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita) and directed Louis Leterrier (The Transporter), it is a surprisingly funny, wickedly entertaining action movie that briskly moves from scene to scene with intensity and emotional resonance. Even better, the acting is unusually strong for a potboiler like this, Hoskins and Freeman providing such stellar support you’d think they were making a Merchant/Ivory epic, not a bloody chopsocky pulp entertainment. Hoskins, in particular, is stunning, adding layers and dimensions to Bart that are completely unexpected. This isn’t your typical maniacal over-the-top villainous performance but instead a nuanced, evenly subtle examination of evil. The smooth-talking rough-edged Bart could sell baby bottles to a morgue attendant, convince the perfect saint a single sin isn’t anything to worry about, while behind the cool veneer and pugnacious attitude lurks a soul of unmitigated depravity.

Don’t get me wrong, Unleashed isn’t high art. This is a dirty, ungainly picture soaked in bodily fluids. The way Besson writes you’d think he was John Woo, mixing together elements from some of the Hong Kong director’s best including Hard-Boiled, The Killer and Once a Thief. It relies upon string upon string of coincidences to hold together, its central fish-out-of-water tale just an excuse to provide Li with interesting locales to exhibit his martial arts prowess. It’s exceedingly silly, yet Leterrier treats it all with dead seriousness giving the film an aura of dread-certain pomposity from which it almost can’t escape.

Escape it does, however, and that is in no small part to the exemplary physical grace and prowess of Li. This is best American film he’s made (even if still light-years from the actor’s classics like Once Upon in China and the more recent Hero), easily erasing duds like The One from memory. For all of Leterrier’s faults as a dramatist, he certainly knows how to stage action, Unleashed filled with one eye-popping martial arts contest after another. The highpoint is a rage-fueled encounter in a bathroom stall the size of a linen closet, Li and his opponent beating upon one another with whip-snap abandon so furious you can feel every crack as you sit tensely in your seat. But this is just one of many extraordinary encounters, Leterrier putting together the best and most viscerally exciting action moments I’ve seen this year.

It isn’t perfect, but then I’ll take bets many of us in the audience weren’t there to see something akin to Shakespeare in the park. For my money, Unleashed more than gets the job done, and even if the writing is a little shallow and the directing a tad haughty it’s still an enjoyable ride. What’s wrong with that?

Film Rating: êêê  (out of 4)