Watch Movies Online: Danny The Dog/Unleashed
One of Jet Li’s best movies to have been filmed in the English language, Unleashed, or as it’s known internationally, Danny the Dog, by French director Luis LeTerrier, and produced by the legendary Luc Beson of Leon and La Femme Nikita, is really a unique, one of a kind action flick, and a fascinating little gem released in the mid zero zeroes. It may not be remembered alongside There Will Be Blood as one of the greatest of the decade, but many who watch movies online consider it fondly.
The movie focuses on a young man named Danny. Danny the Dog. Danny lives with a low rent loan shark named Uncle Bart, in a cage underneath a chop shop. He’s been raised his entire life as an attack dog by Uncle Bart. Their relationship is not healthy, but there’s an interesting layer of emotional depth and complexity in that they really do love one another, it is a family, it’s just not a very good family.
The movie revolves around a very clever gimmick: When Uncle Bart removes the dog collar around Danny’s neck, Danny goes nuts, beating the hell out of anyone in the room. Uncle Bart has trained him to respond in this psychological fashion as such to be a beast when uncollared, and a sweetheart when the collar is on. Throughout the course of the film, Danny’s objective is to learn how to think for himself as such that he doesn’t need the collar to behave civilly.
Danny escapes his master and lives with a kindly old piano tuner played by Morgan Freeman, and his daughter. Here he learns the values of independence and what family is truly all about.
From there, of course, we get into the familiar territory of fighting and revenge, but the movie is really built around a solid and gripping premise. It’s a classic story of the dog who leaves his mean master for a kind master, only replacing the dog with a human being to incredible, dramatic, and exciting results.
The action in the film is a real show stopper, focusing less on efficient, useful kung fu and more on character and story development. So Danny’s style of fighting is undisciplined and wild, he fights like a rabid dog, not like a martial artist, and the result is some of the best action scenes of the last ten or twenty years. He really does fight like a beast with rabies, and not just like… Well, like Jet Li just doing high kicks again.
The movie is ultimately an action flick, and Jet Li beats everyone up and they all live happily ever after and so on and so forth, but there’s a surprising amount of emotional depth and complexity here, as well as some surprisingly great action scenes. Still, you could remove the action and still have a fascinating drama on your hands here.
If you haven’t seen it yet, give it a try. It’s one of Jet Li’s best.
