A terrific yet passionately tender action film

Unleashed; 1:43; R, for strong violent content, language, and some sexuality/nudity; Grade: A

Blame it on genetics and testosterone. Blame it on the media. Turn up your nose and point your fingers wherever you please, but you’re not going to change what wickedness lies in the average man. Whatever it is that drives us to the WWE, football, and the UFC is the same thing that gets our blood pumping for a butt-kicking action flick. It’s been a long time since there’s been a good manly man movie worth watching, and finally—FINALLY—that movie is here.

If you’ve seen the preview for Jet Li’s Unleashed and were turned off by it, well, you might as well just skip the rest of this review—Monster in Law is probably more up your alley. But if you saw the Unleashed preview and thought it looked pretty sweet, you were right. Unleashed is everything one might’ve hoped for, and a million times more. This is the kind of movie that will make you want to beat your chest, while letting out guttural grunts and screams, then punch your best friend in the face just because you can.

Not since Fight Club has there been a movie so visceral. Unleashed is so brutal that you might occasionally want to look away, but you won’t. You want to see this train wreck. While most kung-fu movies make the audience go “ooh” and “ahh” with fancy-pants acrobatics, Unleashed makes the audience go “Ow!” and “Arggh!”, with untamed primal fury. What’s hard to believe is that a movie so full of rage could be half as gentle as Unleashed is.

In Unleashed, Jet Li is Danny, a slave trained by his gang-lord master to be a human attack-dog. With his collar on, Danny is quiet and complacent. Take the collar off, and, uhhh, you don’t want to take the collar off.

When Danny happens upon freedom one day, he is taken in by a blind piano tuner (Morgan Freeman) and his stepdaughter (Kerry Condon). Introduced to a new life of warmth and compassion, he wants nothing more than to stay away from his past life of hate and malice. Eventually, Danny’s former master comes looking for him, and he is forced to protect his new family from the danger of his previous life.

For a movie that’s all about fighting, Unleashed devotes a lot of time to not fighting. Just about half of the movie is spent not on fists of fury, but on pianos and ice cream. As hokey as it might sound, the sentimentalism in Unleashed is completely necessary to the film’s success. By the time the former master finally comes a-knocking, the audience has grown attached to Danny and his loved ones, making the final battle all the more momentous.

This shouldn’t surprise us, considering that Unleashed was written by Luc Besson, the same man responsible for The Professional. Featuring Oscar-caliber performances from Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, and a very young Natalie Portman, The Professional could very well be the most tender action movie ever made, and an absolute must-see (the uncut French original, Leon, is worth checking out, albeit a little creepy).

Unleashed doesn’t carry as much emotional weight as The Professional, but it’s got enough to make us care, and this is due in large part to a surprisingly affective Jet Li. While Li may catch us off guard, though, Morgan Freeman’s superior performance will not. He is Morgan Freeman, after all, and we’ve come to expect greatness.

But let’s not forget what this movie is really about: punching people in the face. Unleashed is easily Jet Li’s best movie made outside of China, and one of the most unquestionably enthralling action flicks I’ve seen in a long time.