Unleashed
Director Louis Leterrier
Writer: Luc Besson
Producers: Luc Besson, Steven Chasman, Jet Li
Stars: Jet Li, Morgan Freeman, Bob Hoskins, Kerry Condon

The prolific Luc Besson attempts with many of his films to strike a balance by presenting an outlandish scenario, then taking it a step or two more seriously than you’d expect, though not so seriously that you feel constrained from a grin. Producing and writing, he assembles a good mix of ingredients in Unleashed, not pandering or shortchanging in his depiction of the awkward process by which a tortured and repressed soul starts to discover itself, but also keeping the violence and style coming and giving each performer room to do what they do best.

For Jet Li, playing “Danny the Dog” (the movie’s title outside of North America), it means adding a new wrinkle to his already legendarily-malleable martial arts repertoire. Compare the serene, fluid grace he showed in Hero with the savage intensity he conjures here. For Bob Hoskins, as his loan shark owner/master/“uncle” Bart, it means calling on the crazy intensity which has immortalized him in the circles of the British crime films even as American audiences have mostly known him for affable supporting roles.

For Morgan Freeman, playing blind piano tuner Sam, it means projecting the quiet dignity and homely wisdom with which he operates best. I have long appreciated the way Freeman seems to embrace his function in most Hollywood movies as the injection of gravitas. His dark pool eyes and rich syrupy baritone are like the garnish on the plate which makes your meal look more grown-up, whether he is calmly pronouncing the destruction of life as we know it via comet in Deep Impact, convincing us he really believes Keanu Reeves is an expert on cold fusion in Chain Reaction, or, here, teaching simple decency to a kung-fu master raised as a dog.

Unleashed is about the journey of Danny from Bart’s influence to Sam’s, and how in that process he re-discovers humanity and the secrets of his past. He also gets into a lot of bloody fights.

Bart runs his territory by simple rules – when you owe him money, he comes around each week with Danny (who he has raised and trained since childhood) in tow. Danny’s got a collar on and is docile as can be. If you do not pay, Bart takes off the collar, and Danny, without a twinge, will beat to death anyone Bart points out.

Danny has earned a reputation around the underbelly of Glasgow, and Bart is just becoming aware of the profit-making potential of finding new arenas to exploit Danny’s skills, like throwing him into underground death-matches and wagering on his victories. But a twist of fate separates them, and a wounded, confused Danny finds himself in Sam’s care.

The major turns of the story from here you can likely hash out for yourselves, but it is the details that will surprise you. Sam cares for a gawky but vivacious teenager (Kerry Condon), a daughter from a previous marriage by his now-dead wife – this convolution is likely meant to explain the racial difference between her and Sam but also reinforces that this family unit is more about love and reliance between people who fall into each other’s care than genetics. She is a piano prodigy and, while Sam is teaching Danny the grown-up things like decency and morals, she is introducing him to equally important life elements like ice cream, and having enough fun that you end up late for dinner. You might think you know where their relationship is going, and you will be surprised.

You will also soon learn not to get attached to particular plot strands, as many get dropped once they have served one particular purpose, while others appear with scant explanation. This is Besson and director Louis Leterrier’s sense of joyful abandon (also on display in the more-fun-than-it-had-any-right-to-be action throwaway The Transporter), willing to play loose with logic in order to relish more time in the grimy Glasgow underworld, or create another opportunity for Danny to scrap.

The fights are staged by Yuen Wo-Ping, whose work on the Matrix trilogy, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill and other fight-heavy hits have made him arguably the first box-office draw from the choreographers’ ranks since Busby Berkeley. And once again he does not disappoint, providing clashes that do not merely expend time, but have shape and pacing and furious (but impeccably comprehensible) movement to them. One clash has Danny in a vicious one-on-one for several minutes inside a cramped and narrow bathroom, and you begin to think that neither participant is making any move to leave because it is too much fun to exercise their skills in this novel environment.

The joy is not right out on the surface in Unleashed – it has a serious story to tell, and much of the middle of the movie is carried not by Li’s martial arts skills, but by his tricky portrayal of a man of few words learning how to trust and express himself. It’s more winning than you would expect, and sometimes funnier, too. American audiences tend not to think of Jet Li as someone with comedic charms, but he gets to demonstrate them here.

That is where the joy lies; because everyone gets to take part in something which sounds quite preposterous in summary, but gives them room to exercise their talents to the fullest, and gets us to think beyond that summary and enjoy ourselves just by opening up our willingness to be entertained.

Hero
Director: Zhang Yimou
Writers: Feng Li, Bin Wang, Zhang Yimou
Producer: Bill Kong, Zhang Yimou
Stars: Jet Li, Daoming Chen, Tony Leung Chu Wai, Maggie Cheung, Donnie Yen, Zhang Ziyi

You begin with the premise that all movie action is inherently a lie. Outrunning explosions in slow-motion, having vicious fistfights that never leave a bruise – these are contrivances that are at the service of the art. What really matters is: what kind of art is being served?

Like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon before it, Hero (an international hit for the last two years only now getting stateside release by Miramax) comes to us with a treatment of violence that challenges us as moviegoers. It is more like a ballet than a fight, the participants are not so much opponents as trusting partners working in harmony to express a feeling. In this movie, the clash of swords can express vengeance, serenity, rage, sorrow, disdain, conspiracy, love. And it does so in the service of a story that seems at once epic and fable.

It has been ten years since the King of Qin (Daoming Chen) has had a decent night’s sleep. He dreams of conquering the six other kingdoms and unifying China, and with his intimidating army, it seems within his grasp to do it. So he is constantly at risk of assassination – three years ago an attempt nearly succeeded, and he is still not sure why it didn’t. Now he never removes his armor, and no one can come within 100 paces of him.

But today he makes an exception. A local prefect, a swordsman known only as Nameless (Jet Li), comes bearing proof that he has killed the three deadliest assassins in the land – Sky (Donnie Yen), Snow (Maggie Cheung), and Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chu Wai). The King wants to hear how Nameless achieved this, and when he is satisfied with each story, he will reward Nameless with gold, land and permission to move closer so they may drink together in celebration.

What follows is more than a little like Akira Kurosawa’s convention-shattering Rashomon, where we hear one version of events, then another, and still another, as we move closer to what may be the truth. It is only when Nameless has been invited an unprecedented 10 paces from the King that the King begins to realize an important angle – that any man who maneuvers his way into this position through such improbable claims could be a very clever assassin himself.

We jump back and forth from scenes of Nameless’ adventures – full of passion and intrigue and gorgeous violence, to the throne room, where two figures sit absolutely still, taking each others’ measure, gauging each others’ intentions. The King asks questions, and Nameless answers them, his tone of obedient respect never wavering even as the content of the conversation changes. It’s a legitimate debate which half of the movie is the more exciting.

What lingers in the memory about the fight sequences is more than just the maneuvers. We remember color and motion, billowing fabric, falling leaves, the percussive sound of raindrops on stones. Director Zhang Yimou (Shanghai Triad, Raise the Red Lantern) has always been as much painter as photographer, and creates a strong visual palette for each of his movies. Hero is like an album of masterworks, or a jog through a gallery wing – each stretch of the movie has its own signature color and style. Strikingly, a library where a key conversation took place is a different color in every new variation of the story.

Each of the leads has a long track record in Hong Kong action cinema, and each delivers not only physically (we remember once again how there’s wire-fu, and there’s great wire-fu), but emotionally. What a challenge it is, for the assassins, to create a character out of a patchwork of fiction, revealing common truths underneath each new iteration of fancy. Whether through the peculiarities of subtitling or the strength of the original script, all dialogue is effectively blunt and unadorned. Verbal communication is not where any of them do the real work of sharing their feelings. For that, you have to watch the swords.

In one sequence, Sky creates miniature whirlwinds with the speed of hers, lifting her attacker off the ground and trapping her in a tornado of autumn leaves. In another, she and Nameless stand on a roof, deflecting at blinding speed a black storm of thousands of arrows being fired by an army. Beneath the roof, a calligraphy teacher defiantly continues his lesson, serenely sketching letters in the sand as arrows thunk into the walls all around him. Nameless and Broken Sword duel while seemingly floating above a lake, using the tips of their weapons to skip off the surface of the water.

Yes, it’s all a preposterous affront to physics. But remember our premise – why, in an art form that has posited to us that space ships having laser dogfights can be heard in a vacuum, or that an alien could evolve that has acid for blood, or that bullets always hit the bad guy in the head but the good guy in the shoulder, should we discriminate against this? Hero is relating to us a legend, one of the defining stories of the Chinese culture, in an arresting, frequently breathtaking style. And in the service of that, not only will I accept impossible feats of martial arts agility, I’ll applaud them.