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Bounding out of the gate like a greyhound, Unleashed needs only its first 30 seconds or so to elevate itself well above the average action potboiler.
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80One of the best Sunday Afternoon action flicks since the glory days of Schwarzenegger.
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80The most enjoyable film Besson has had his name on in eons.
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80Pierre Morel's diving, spiraling camera keeps pace with Yuen Wo-ping's rapid-fire fight choreography, all smartly directed by Louis Leterrier.
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75Ingenious in its construction.
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75When Danny takes off his collar for the last time, Besson's plan becomes clear: You may have paid for an hour and a half of escapist entertainment, but he just provided something much better.
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75The simple, unpretentious storytelling of Unleashed is a rarity in the glut of underwritten and overproduced action films that dominate American screens today.
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An action picture with the emotional simplicity of a bedtime story, painted in the grimy colors of the London underworld.
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70Pathos isn't a cheap gimmick when it comes from the soul, and Li knows how to channel it, through his brain, his limbs and his heart.
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70Besson doesn't need dialogue to convey his worlds' nuances, because there are none, especially in Unleashed, which achieves such a sustained pitch of hysteria that it makes past masters of melodrama like Douglas Sirk, John Woo, and Sam Fuller look positively austere by comparison.
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70The infinitely silly, unconscionably entertaining action film Unleashed earns most of its juice from the martial-arts star Jet Li.
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67Unleashed suffers from a surfeit of sentimentality at times (blame Besson for that), but it's Li's first major Western role of any depth and he acquits himself admirably as both mad dog and melancholy master.
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63Li is action poetry in motion. Damn them for spoiling our popcorn fun with salty tear-jerking.
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63Unleashed serves two masters, each one disappointingly: It's a brutal series of over-amped fights, and it's a touching story of human nature at war with itself.
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63A preposterous mix of sentiment and brutality that casts martial-arts star Jet Li as a music-loving killing machine, turns out to be his most entertaining movie in quite some time.
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63Ultimately, the movie doesn't make it, but there's enough going on to make it more arf than barf.
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63The film contains enough quiet, reflective moments for us to become aware how preposterous the central conceit is, and that keeps us at arm's length.
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63While Bresson's insistence on juxtaposing brute force with sublime grace isn't subtle, it is effective.
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60Slick transitions and punchy pace leave just enough time for Hopkins and Freeman to make dopey dialogue sound far smarter than it is. And as both pit bull and puppy dog, Jet Li convinces.
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50Unleashed is like an old dog: No new tricks.
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50Freeman and Hoskins lend the film a level of artistry it doesn't really deserve. Unleashed has a vivid concept, but savagery and sentimentality make strange costars.
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50Doing nothing special, Freeman manages to make the picture seem wiser, funnier, and more eloquent than it is.
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50In its defence, the movie means to incorporate Jet's conversion into its theme, serving up his new pacifism as a choice morsel of irony. But it doesn't taste ironic, just bland, and we aren't biting either.
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50The film's bizarreness pales next to that of little-known exploitation film "Sonny Boy" (1990), which weaves similar material into something authentically nightmarish.
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50The movie never recovers from its cheesy center.
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50Only Kerry Condon, as Freeman's geeky adopted daughter, plays anything approaching a realistic character.
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A little less conversation, a lot more action, please.
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40A promising idea that never develops beyond that.
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40Includes a few scenes of impressively choreographed mayhem, but they're all but buried in Freeman and Condon's mystical grandpa and weirdo teeny bopper routines.
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25Luc Besson's screenplay is dumb, but has just enough weird touches to give occasional glimmers of interest.
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10Cloying dreck.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 28 out of 30
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Mixed: 1 out of 30
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Negative: 1 out of 30
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