Unleashed

Unleashed | |
| Rated: | None |
| Director: | Louis Leterrier |
| Cast: | Jet Li, Morgan Freeman, Bob Hoskins, Kerry Condon |
| Release Date: | 2005 |
| Genre: | Action, Martial Arts |
Only the pulpy near-genius behind the Lolita-with-guns premise of The Professional could divine the supergenius idea of plopping a Kaspar Hauser character into Enter the Dragon. Since that writer, Luc Besson, is also a Frenchman, Unleashed is also overripe with a ludicrously mawkish morality that makes strange bedfellows of rosily romantic music appreciation and some of the best hand-to-hand bloodyings this side of a Suge Knight contract negotiation. Bob Hoskins rocks a crème-on-crème suit as the underworld thug Bart, a Glaswegian moneylender whose muscle is the barely tamed man-child Danny (Jet Li), who lives in a cage and can open up a whole ass-whoop case on command. Now, Bart doesn’t actually traffic in polite society, so when shove comes to gun, Danny escapes and wanders into the care of blind American piano tuner Sam (Morgan Freeman) and his piano-studying stepdaughter Victoria (Kerry Condon), with whom Danny comes to realize that beating the living fuck out of people is, you know, not very nice. Unleashed rattles between ultraviolence and ultrasentimentality so scattershot you never hold a feeling for too long, but it does include what is, undoubtedly, the greatest fight in a claustrophobically narrow water closet ever shot.