Unleashed

Unleashed is definitely the best of the American Jet Li movies, though that’s not saying much. Li stars as a young martial arts prodigy brainwashed to serve a mob boss (Bob Hoskins, overacting even more gleefully than in Son of the Mask). A series of ever-more-improbable events places him in the underground world of pit fighting, and eventually exposes him to the outside world, where he learns about his skills and hidden past with the aid of a blind piano teacher and his daughter (Morgan Freeman and a delightfully sweet Kerry Conran).

Jet Li: mad at his watch

In addition to the imaginatively staged action sequences, Luc Besson’s engaging story keeps your attention better than the premise might suggest. The plot slows to a crawl in the middle section, when Freeman, Li and Conran are exploring their world, but the trio’s chemistry carries it through. It’s also ridiculously fun watching Freeman play a blind man, in which his anti-Method-method seems to be to put on a pair of shades. But hell, even Morgan Freeman on autopilot is a worthwhile performance.

The script plays to Li’s strengths, focusing on his remarkably expressive face while not requiring him to work too much with his still-flawed English. He has enormous amounts of conflict and internal confusion to bring to the surface, and does so admirably.

But this is an action movie: Hoskins and various henchmen show up to start trouble, and it’s time for Li to bring out his other strength: the ability to kick dudes in the head at lightspeed. A series of early scenes of Li destroying everyone in his path with ruthless efficiency brings to mind Luc Besson’s The Professional, and of course the final battle pits him against at least 50 bad guys. But perhaps the best moment is a fight that has about five minutes of buildup and is over in less than five seconds.

Longstanding rumor has it that Li’s fighting skills were slowed down for his American debut in Lethal Weapon 4 because he was just too fast for the camera to see. That’s not the case here. Unleashed is far from perfect, and it’s not exactly The Professional, but it’s a good change of pace from Li’s output of the last few years.