“Unleashed” is a tender kung fu movie, launching at 110 mph before slowing down to a sweet baby crawl. Each of those contradictions is beautifully calibrated, creating a weirdly wonderful martial-arts classic that is punch-drunk on childhood.
Before you see it you’ll never believe that a bunch of chop-socky veterans could produce a moving film whose retreats into domestic comfort are as soulful as their gangster fights are exhilarating.
The preview audience wasn’t expecting to cheer Jet Li wielding a poleax and then sniffle at the strains of Mozart’s Sonata No. 11 floating through a nursery. Writer Luc Besson and director Louis Leterrier shock us with an 88-key range, from sadistic forte to artistic pianissimo.
“Unleashed” is one of those rare gems, a date movie with exploding squibs.
“Unleashed” replays many myths in its fairy-tale atmosphere, but Frankenstein comes most often to mind. Cruel Uncle Bart (Bob Hoskins) has crafted a monster, a mute toy named Danny (Jet Li) who is as docile as a dog until his collar is unhooked. Then Danny’s nickname might as well be Acela – a bullet train with no brakes. He shreds anyone in his path, which makes Uncle Bart’s job as a loan shark a lot easier.
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Danny is unleashed for the first time about three seconds into the film, and he illuminates a drab warehouse with a blinding flash of kicks, rabbit punches and flips. Li’s effective demeanor as the dopey dog makes his explosive rage all the more impressive. Soon, some even tougher criminals want Danny to star in the kind of super-secret death-cage betting matches that plague the underworld, but which I never get invited to.
Hoskins is a sexy beast indeed as Danny’s evil foil. He spews venom at his victims, but treats Danny with affection that would almost befit a dog if Danny were actually a mutt. In many moments, Hoskins is ready to play the kind uncle, but then instead of asking you to pull his finger, he’ll rip your whole arm from its socket.
Circumstance as appropriate as it is shocking gives Danny a chance to escape. Just as an abused and newly freed dog would, he follows the first master with a kind word, who happens to be Morgan Freeman. They don’t come much kinder than Freeman’s character, a piano tuner. Danny hears those hammered strings in his memory without knowing why.
They go home to Freeman’s safe, book-lined apartment, all aged wood and tea cozies. He has a daughter (Kerry Condon) who takes to Danny as a reclamation project. The home scenes would be cloying if the director tried to get too much from Li – dialogue is not his strength. But he’s a wizard with facial expressions, and we see the stunted boy in him cling to the home’s warm corners like a holy shrine.
Some viewers may feel heartburn coming on at the simple emotions of the man-child, but if you at all buy the fairy tale, it works.
These wildly disparate worlds, super nice and ultra deadly, must eventually clash. Danny’s idyll will end, and then we will get an answer to the intriguing problem presented by his dog collar: He has been taught to fight, but has no judgment about when fighting is right or wrong.
Besson and Leterrier stretch out this anticipation just enough, filming Danny’s boyhood flashbacks with an appealing sepia tone and gentle strains of lush piano music.
Highlighting the warmth is a biting sense of humor. A crime boss praises Uncle Bart for his deadly Danny dog, and Bart replies: “Like me mum said, git ’em young and the possibilities are endless.”
Says the boss: “I thought it was the Jesuits who said that.”
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
“Unleashed”
***½
R for graphic martial-arts violence, language, some nudity|1 hour, 35 minutes|SOULFUL MARTIAL ARTS |Directed by Louis Leterrier; written by Luc Besson; starring Jet Li, Bob Hoskins, Morgan Freeman and Kerry Condon|Opens today at area theaters.
