Review of Unleashed (2005) by Andrew U — 10 Jul 2009

Jet Li's last movie was Hero, and it's hard to imagine a film that any actor could less suitably follow-up (with anything) than Zhang Yimou's martial arts masterpiece. That said, however, Li makes an admirable attempt with Unleashed, a picture that exploits his limited English and slightly less limited acting ability to terrific effect in the service of some of the year's best action. Li plays Danny, a pugilist kept under literal lock and key until time comes for him to deliver devastating smackdowns to anyone within range; what this means is that he basically goes nuts on any and everyone in the room, and beats them to death with any and every part of his body. What that means for the audience, however, is a brilliantly-wrought brawl of a film, and one that ranks as Li's best yet American adventure. Luc Besson, who has evidently sworn off actually making movies himself (when I asked him late last year when his next movie would come out, he said, 'When I feel like it'), wrote the story for Unleashed, and the story feels like a not-too-distant relative of his seminal 1994 action classic The Professional (or Leon, if like me you're one of its devoted followers). Danny is only a rudimentary human; that is, he eats, sleeps and kills, and enjoys no other interests, save for his children's book (much like Leon had his pet plant). When he is confronted with levels of humanity ? that is to say, his own ? that went untapped for years, it's both a frightening and fascinating experience; subsequently, it's that growing connection to others that ultimately inhibits his ability to do his 'job.'.

Li, clearly affected by his work on Yimou's kung fu character study, seems to have found his A-game acting, and lends depth to a performance that could easily have been purely one-dimensional. That of course isn't to say that he's threatening to steal Academy Awards from some of Hollywood's top thespians, but that he functions with singular effectiveness in the role; I can think of no other actor who could bring out both Danny's initial, primitive physicality and his emergent complexity. But for folks who care little about character development, the action is about as good as audiences are likely too see on American shores this side of the Matrix movies. For lack of a better way to describe it, Li kicks some righteous ass, and fight choreographer Yuen Wo Ping (Matrix, Kill Bill) assembles the sequences at a crossroads between bare-knuckle street brawling and the balletic displays of his previous work. Despite these superlatives, the film is far from perfect, and in fact shares some of its Star Wars competitor's shortcomings: Li and Freeman are top-notch as student and mentor-cum-father and son, but Bob Hoskins occasionally overplays his role as Bart, growling at the camera with a little too much ferocity to maintain believability, and one actor in particular ? Kerry Condon as Sam's adopted daughter Victoria ? almost wrecks the film outright. Condon's previous credits include Angela's Ashes and Ned Kelly, but she overacts monstrously as Victoria, lending a performance that feels like a 28-year-old playing a 18-year-old as if she were only eight, and frequently upsets the dramatic flow that the rest of the cast generates from the familial conflicts.

Then again, writer-producer Besson has never been a stranger to over-acting ? masterful as they are, Gary Oldman and Chris Tucker are almost out of place in Leon and The Fifth Element's quasi-serious worlds ? so this liability proves to be little more than a temporary distraction. Unleashed, after all, may not be the year's best dramatic film, but it is a great piece of popcorn entertainment. Of course, it arrives in theaters mere days before George Lucas' juggernaut wipes out all competition laying in its path, leaving little hope for the longevity Li's picture deserves; but in a perfect world, much like would be the case if Lucas and Li paired off for a sparring session or two, this would be the mainstream movie to beat during the month of May.