I rented Unleashed purely because I was closing up at the video store and I felt like something stupid and fun – and because Lether Lassie reccomended it to me while chatting on AIM. I expected nothing really from this film.
It was FANTASTIC!
I’m not a huge hub of knowledge when it comes to Kung-Fu films. I’ve seen a handfull of them. My brother was all Jackie Chan crazy, and I saw a few of those.
But I’ve never seen the “classics” you know, the ones with Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris.
Anyway, so... The Story: Danny (Jet Li) grows up in a cage, trained as a human attack-dog by his owner/master Bart (Bob Hoskins). Fate releases Danny one day and he falls into the hands of Sam (Morgan Freeman) who takes care of him. Sam is also taking care of his deceased best friends teenaged daughter, Victoria (Kerry Condon).
That’s the set-up. Danny learns to live a normal life through Morgan Freeman’s guidance, and developes a crush Victoria, because what would a Kung-Fu movie be without a love story… Well, an average Kung-Fu movie, I’m guessing.
Anyway, everything in this movie WORKS…. Except for Victoria, which I will get to in a second. Morgan Freeman, always loveable, ups his loveability by being 100% blind, as opposed to the last time I saw him, in Million Dollar Baby where he was only 50% blind. Bob Hoskins is… God, how do I BEGIN to describe how awesome Bob Hoskins is in this film. I’d only seen him in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and let me just say, OMG BOB HOSKINS KICKS ASS!!!!! Watching him play a bad guy, with his proper accent was like having a minor religious experience. Bob Hoskins = Best Bad Guy Ever.
The thing that didn’t work, and when I say "didn’t" I mean, “holy crap did this suck” was the part of Victoria. She’s supposed to be MY age, but she looks like she’s thirty! I asked a friend about this and they said that it’s probably because Jet Li was supposed to look like he was a teenager, and in order to make that believable all the other teenagers have to be played by old people.
Now, if that isn’t insulting enough – having a thirty-year-old play a teenager - they wrote her dialogue as if she was a teenager that stepped out of a time machine from 1997. At one point she actually says, “NOT!”.
Come on.
Anyway, apart from that, this movie was awesome. Total popcorn fun. Don’t expect to be moved, or discover anything new, just expect a fun hour and a half of kick-ass kung fu… And an amazing performance by Bob Hoskins.
And some boobies.
Not.
...
K, that's just gay, even as a joke.
