UNLEASHED

Not even Charles Dickens--indefatigable chronicler of abused childhood--would have come up with something like Unleashed. It makes Oliver Twist sound like Cinderella. From an early age, Danny (Jet Li) was trained as an attack dog by gangster Bart (Bob Hoskins), who regularly uses him to intimidate his enemies. Danny is kept in a damp cellar, an iron collar around his neck. Chronology is not the film's strong suit, but we are supposed to believe that this unfortunate creature, now fairly mature, has spent the last thirty years as an indentured slave. Then Bart is almost killed in a gangland shootout, and Danny is suddenly left to roam the streets as the stray dog he basically is. He's taken under the merciful wing of a blind piano tuner (Morgan Freeman) whose adopted daughter (Kelly Condon) teaches Danny to eat with knife and fork. She also discovers hidden musical talents Danny picked up from his mother, long ago murdered by the sadistic Bart. There's an awkward hint of romance between Danny and Kelly, fortunately stymied by the reappearance of Bart, now almost foaming at the mouth with self-induced hydrophobia.
        

Unleashed played in France sometime ago, under the rather more appropriate title of Danny the Dog. Its promoter and screenplay writer is the prolific Luc Besson, with his protegé Louis Leterrier as nominal director. When Besson couldn't get financing in Hollywood or Paris, he moved his usual French crew to Glasgow and shot the picture in English, with a multinational cast.
     

Jet Li, the martial arts star, makes sorrowful faces at the camera, but only comes alive when he stops pretending to be a victim (or an actor) and kick-boxes to his fans' content. The extremely violent action sequences occasionally resurrect this moribund saga of Little Orphan Danny, his Sightless Savior and his Fearless Fagin. As usual, Morgan Freeman plays Morgan Freeman. The Condon girl is rather contraceptive. Bob Hoskins gives his all to score Worst Performance, even among such poor, unprepossessing competition.
      

Those tumultuous fights, choreographed by reliable expert Yuen Wo Ping, may somewhat compensate genre addicts for the bother of watching, with Fido-like devotion, this wretched melodrama, incredible to the last bark. As for Besson and Leterrier, they can always claim the dog ate their homework.

                                             Rene Jordan