UNLEASHED

RATING:

Starring: Morgan Freeman, Jet Li, Bob Hoskins, Kerry Condon, Christian Gazio, Silvio Simac. Written by: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamene. Directed by: Louis Leterrier

Rated R for strong violent content, language and some sexuality/nudity

“Unleashed” is something more than a dumb action movie, and it’s something less than a smart drama. Often violent, sometimes sappy, and not really very touching, this is the story of a man who becomes a dog who becomes a man. Who then becomes a dog again, briefly, and then emerges as a man.

Jet Li’s character, Danny, is treated like a dog. Literally. He wears a dog-collar, and when that collar is—wait for it—unleashed, he acts like a pit-bull, slaughtering anyone that his master tells him to. Bart (a maniacal Bob Hoskins), Danny’s “owner,” of sorts, is an upper middle class thug, a heartless man who gets what he wants because Danny can bail him out of any situation.

The first scene immediately establishes Danny’s merciless, lethal tenacity. This is not the lithe, graceful Jet Li that we’re used to in “Hero” or “The Legend.” Li worked extensively with Woo-ping Yuen, the fight choreographer behind “Kill Bill,” “The Matrix,” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” to create a more brutal, canine-like fighting style. The fights are blunt and vicious. It’s jarring. It’s effective.

In conditions only marginally better than an actual dog, Danny lives in Bart’s cellar, in the dark, with only a boxing bag for company. He can’t read. He can barely talk. The only thing he seems to understand is how to kill.

This is a fairly ridiculous premise. But somehow it works: credit director Louis Leterrier and screenwriter Luc Besson (of “La Femme Nikita” and “The Professional” fame) for making us believe in this otherwise unbelievable world. Hoskins brings a demonized joy to the evil Bart, and Jet Li grabs our attention as the stoic, secretly sulking, poker-faced assassin. It’s a great hook for an action movie.

So far so good. On their next money-collecting missions, Danny is so impressive, so lethal, that he garners attention from a gladiator-scout, or something. (So really, how do you get in the gladiator-scouting business? My high school guidance counselor totally left that off the list of career options.) After Danny’s first gladiator-style match, we start to sense that maybe, underneath it all, Danny isn’t so happy being a killing machine.

The next day, by sheer coincidence, Danny runs into Sam (Morgan Freeman), a kindly, benevolent, blind old piano-tuner. In a scene that is likely an attempt at poignancy, Sam teachers Danny the basics of playing the piano. Delighted, Danny presses down each key, as he discovers, for the first time in his sorry life, something besides blood.

After the culmination of some crime-action subplots that are not worth recounting, a car-wreck seems to kill Bart and his henchman, leaving Danny on his own, free. Unable to read, communicate, or even clearly think, Danny visits the only friend he’s ever known, the kindly old piano-tuner. Sam, of course, welcomes Danny into his life. Why? Because that’s what benevolent old blind men do, especially if they’re starring in not-so-subtle dramas.

Learning to relax for the very first time, Danny becomes humanized in the Blind Benevolent Home. He bonds with Sam’s geeky daughter, Victoria (Kerry Condon) who might have something of a crush. In a scene that’s genuinely enjoyable in its awfulness, Victoria teaches Sam how to eat ice cream, laughing after he first tries to take a big bite.

Sam begins to exorcise his old dog-fighting demons, but he’s still haunted by memories of . . . his mother. That’s right. In the middle of the movie, out of nowhere, Leterrier introduces the uninteresting—and transparent—question of Danny’s biological mother, as if that’s somehow the key to his current psychology. What could have happened to his mother? Why isn’t she around? Is she alive? Dead? Here’s a hint: the answer somehow involves the pure-evil-Bart.

Bart, it seems, is very much alive, and desperate to have Danny back in the fold. Soon Danny is torn between two worlds: the wonderful human world of Sam, and the dark, slave-like, dog-fighting universe of Bart. What will he do? Will he continue to kill? Will he go back to being a dog?

The answers are obvious, but the journey is enjoyable enough. Even though the drama is hammed-up and clunky, it still provides adequate counterweight to the fists and weapons of the action. There’s nothing close to catharsis, but this is no Steven Segal debacle, either.

Agree? Disagree? E-mail me at jeff@latinoreview.com.