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Film
Also opening: Beauty and the beast
By STEVE PERSALL
Published May 12, 2005
It's a dog's life for Danny (Jet Li), an orphan raised as a slave by a ruthless fight club promoter (Bob Hoskins) to kill for profit, wearing a shock collar and eating face-first from a bowl. That's the idea behind Unleashed (R), but it gets even more unlikely.
Danny's pit-bull personality is softened when he meets a blind piano tuner (Oscar winner Morgan Freeman), who introduces him to music, soothing the savage. The promoter doesn't want his meal ticket tamed, possibly leading to a showdown between Rachmaninoff and knock your block off. Unleashed may be the first movie endorsed by both the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
Director Louis Leterrier's first film, The Transporter, was a bare-knuckled pleasure. Screenwriter Luc Besson knows something about gritty crime dramas, judging from The Professional and La Femme Nikita. You can't find a better actor than Freeman, a more ferocious one than Hoskins, or many better martial arts stars than Li. What we couldn't find was a screening of Unleashed in time for Weekend coverage.
[Last modified May 11, 2005, 09:32:06]
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Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
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