For those have not seen the trailer for Unleashed or heard about it yet, here's a brief summary of what you can expect. Jet Li plays a young man named Danny. He has been raised to be a tool of destruction. His uncle Bart (Bob Hoskins) treats him like a dog and controls him like one. He even has Danny wear a dog collar. When the collar is taken off, Danny goes into kill mode. Hence the title Unleashed, because when Danny is unleashed, no one is safe. At first Danny acts completely mindless and emotionless. He has been raised like an animal and acts like one with only the most primal instincts. However, we begin to see he is a person and he slowly gets the chance to become human. It is this point in the movie when he meets Sam (Morgan Freeman) and Victoria (Kerry Condon), who help him gain his humanity. The development from inhuman to human is the dramatic aspect of the movie, and also something that does not really work out well when mixed with a lot of violence.

What I did not like about the movie was the complete 180 the movie seemed to take from one portion to another. At first there was an overbearing amount of action, and then the movie felt like an after school special with Danny learning to interact in society as a person and not an animal. The two extremes did not seem to fit well together. In the end it left the movie a bit too unreal and hard to stomach. I think if the movie had a stronger focus on just action or just drama, it would have turned out a lot different. I can't say it would be necessarily good, because the story on its own right is still pretty dry.

Another issue I had with this movie is that I'm used to seeing Jet Li in more action packed movies with a lot less emphasis on the drama. So it was a little difficult to watch him take on a serious and dramatic role. I was not fully convinced he handled the role entirely well. At times it seemed to work, but when you add the abrupt action with the horrendously fake storyline it does not work out well. In addition, the characters played by Freeman and Condon were not great. In the case of Freeman, his talents felt way underused. He is a terrific actor and seemed to put little into the overall movie. Condon's performance was decent, but nothing spectacular. I imagine she could have been replaced and it would not have affected the overall movie. On a positive note, Hoskins fit his role as the bad guy really well. His performance felt so sinister and creepy that you had to really hate him. Both the way he delivered his dialogued and carried himself seemed to heighten the disgust.

The bottom line, I was pretty bored with this movie. I really love Jet Li. I think he is a great martial artist and watching him in his Hong Kong flicks like Fong Sai Yuk, Once Upon a Time in China Trilogy, The Bodyguard From Beijing, Hitman, and My Father is a Hero is great. I even enjoy his American films like The One and Romeo Must Die. But Unleashed was just so hard to stomach. This movie is one I would suggest you skip.