Thursday, September 21, 2006

Yeah, but MY dog never karate kicks anyone: "Unleashed"

For as many movies as he has made, Jet Li is pretty much off my radar. I've seen none of his Asian movies and skipped his American coming-out, "Lethal Weapon 4," because it looked ... what's the word I'm looking for? Ah yes ... crappy. I did catch "Romeo Must Die," which was somewhat entertaining, but haven't see the recent period martial-arts film "Hero" or the B-movies "Cradle 2 the Grave" and "Kiss of the Dragon." So yeah, not so much Jet Li for me.

I also passed on "Unleashed" in the theaters, recalling mediocre reviews and a rather silly premise: Our man Jet is treated like an attack dog, set loose by Bob Hoskins to destroy people, before escaping and becoming a human being under the watchful eye of cuddly Morgan Freeman. And Li's not even a penguin!

After watching the movie on HBO, I can report that the plot is pretty much what I thought, with a little more back-and-forth between the bad old life with Hoskins and the good life with Freeman. There's also a girl on the good side, who was pretty geeky but -- I later learned -- the same actress who played an aspiring teen lesbian in "Rome," and showed her goodies to boot. Wow, that's some range.

As for "Unleashed," we get a combination martial arts bloodfest and feel-good tale of salvation, which doesn't always work. Strike that ... it almost never works. Sure, Li has the fierce chop-socky face and the wounded puppy dog face down pat, and he's generally likable when not flailing away with his limbs. And yeah, the action is decent enough, especially after Li has decided he doesn't want to kill anymore yet has to deal with both a battle to the death, gladiator-style, and a tilt in a bathroom -- maybe the most amusing fight scene in the movie.

But the story is way too uneven and boring in more than one part -- unforgiveable for this kind of action fare. And the characters? Blah. I know, I know ... it's not like Meryl Streep was up for a part here. This is the same director, after who, who did the "Transporter" movies.

Still, if you're going to trot people who can actually act, i.e. Freeman and Hoskins, let's try not to make them total cartoons. Freeman was his standard nurturer; I'm guessing the DVD has outtakes of him saying, "Y'all have my check ready, right?" And Hoskins was less terrifying than laughable. C'mon, man ... you were in "Super Mario Bros." and "Spice World." Those were much scarier than anything I saw here!

3 Comments:

At 2:17 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

And your review of Torque is coming when?

 
At 2:20 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

FYI.
Expressing displeasure over the fact that the theme of martial arts movies is "always revenge," Jet Li has told the Los Angeles Times that he will no longer make such films. Li made his remarks on the eve of the opening of his latest film, Fearless, about a Chinese martial arts master who died in 1910. "In this movie and in my past three movies, I continue to say that violence is not any solution," Li told the Times.He said that he had become concerned that the spirit of martial arts, wushu, had become lost in movies, especially when young people confronted him. "On the street, I see a lot of young teenagers saying, 'Hey, Jet Lit. Beat up somebody! Fight! Fight!" The true meaning of wushu, he said, is "stop fighting."

 
At 12:12 PM, Blogger Reese said...

I saw "Fearless" yesterday and wrote a review of it. Guess what? It was really damn good. And it got across that whole "true spirit of Wushu" thing quite well.

cheerio, chaps

 

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