Please Don't Hurt Jet Li. He's Sweet. And He Will Break You.
You know the traditional action movie, where some tough guy gets beset by all sorts of problems, blows up a national monument, and then scores with a really hot woman as the city burns behind them? God, haven't we seen that enough times? We have. Trust us. We want a little bit more from our action movies now, like things getting blown up in obscure cities in Europe, and themes of unromantic love. Familial love. Love as redemption. Love as motivation for personal growth.
Disclosure: We were totally spoiled by Bourne Supremacy.
Unleashed, which opens tomorrow (May 13), is an action film closer to West Side Story than The Terminator. The fight scenes between Jet Li and various and sundry mobs of stylish, body armored thugs are choreographed so beautifully that they're almost non-violent (besides the spurts of blood, breaking of backs, and a wild fight scene that plays out in a tiny Scottish bathroom involving the biting off of someone's nipple.) Sure, we hear the meat-on-meat sound of the beatings, but we also see Jet Li's dynamic, dance-like martial arts portrayed not as magical and unbelievable (like so many other martial arts films), but as real and possible. It's as if he's performing a series of kata: man vs man, man vs sword, man vs crazy bondage thug with spiked helmet. And the bands of thugs may as well approach him with switch blades at the ready while snapping in time to their dip-legged gait.
And then, there's the love.
The film follows Danny (Jet Li) from his life as a mindless "guided missile" for his adopted mob boss father (Bob Hoskins) through his awakening as a real person through the help of his adopted blind piano tuner father (Morgan Freeman). There are heart wrenching scenes in this movie of love and compassion and pain and emotional torture. There is discussion of piano tuning, and ice cream, and how to tell when a mellon is ripe. It is a movie with a message about family, and about violence, and about the things that really matter, whatever those are.
(Though, we must admit, the whole multi-racial, multi-ethnic family unit thing was a bit ... much. An orphaned Chinese boy, adopted by a Scottish mobsters and his cockney/Mancunian thugs, then readopted by a blind black American and his adopted white daughter? We truly are living in the future!)
We'll be honest with you. We see pretty much every movie that comes out in the theatres, regardless of quality. We saw Daredevil, and then, knowing what we were getting into, saw Elektra. And we did not, underline underline, want to see Unleashed. We thought, "Kung Fu and Morgan Freeman? Please!" But we were wrong. This is a solid film, shot beautifully, with a tasty score by Massive Attack, people with funny accents, kick ass fighting scenes, and the sweetest anti-bondage scene we've ever seen.
Unleashed
Jet Li / Morgan Freeman / Bob Hoskins
Written by Luc Besson
Showtimes via Google
