- Those people were fighting, you knew that right?
- Yes
- Sometimes people get scared when they're around things like that.
- < shrugs > They weren't fighting me.

After watching a sub par asian action movie last week I decided I needed to try to wash the bad taste away with some Jet Li. I knew this was a sketchy prospect since Jet Li's work after he left Hong Kong has been consistenly sub-par. But I'd heard some good things about his latest effort, Unleashed, and thought I'd give it a try.

This movie really strained against my theory about Hong Kong action movies (I covered this about a week ago.) This one actually tried to have a real plot, and do something interesting. They did ok with this, but the problem was I didn't really care. I was just there to watch Jet Li do amazing things, and all that dialog, character development, and you know, acting, in the middle just had me saying "yeah, yeah, get on it with. When's the next fight sequence?"

As for the fight sequences, they were actually pretty good. The camera wasn't too choppy, and the shot angles were typically wide enough that you could see what was going on. Plus, Jet Li did something really interesting. He acted with his fighting technique. His character was an exceptional fighter, but he was purely aggressive and carnal. Jet Li is usually very precise but here he changed it up. The way he punched, the way he moved, was totally different. This was interesting to watch, and in my opinion, a great acting feat. Li's been training to fight a certain way all his life, those motions are ingrained, he changed them up in a way that made sense for his character. It was neat.

Overall, the movie was only passable. Unless you're a pretty solid Jet Li fan I can't really endorse this one.

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