REVIEWED - UNLEASHED: The competition is fierce, but the most ludicrous moment in this extraordinary martial arts picture probably occurs when Morgan Freeman, a blind piano tuner with a virtuoso stepdaughter, takes Jet Li, a mute brawler who has been raised as a dog, into his local Spar.
"The best supermarket in Glasgow," Freeman explains. We're in Glasgow? How can that be possible? The kindly black man is American. Kerry Condon, an Irishwoman, plays his stepdaughter. The hero is Chinese. Everybody else in the film - including Bob Hoskins's hilariously indestructible hoodlum - speaks with a London accent. No city on the planet is so short of Scottish people.
Still, an unacknowledged adaptation of Oliver Twist set in an ethnically cleansed Glasgow starring Jet Li in a dog collar is not something you see every day. Jet's character was, while still a child, captured by Hoskins and brought up to live and behave like a savage attack dog. Eventually he escapes and moves in with nice old Morgan. Harshly schooled by his brutal master, he knows not to hump Ms Condon's leg or get up on the couch straight after walkies.
Happiness is, however, short lived.
The fights, which - nodding, perhaps, towards the after-hours recreation of the location's lowlifes - feature more bashing of heads against concrete than is usual in such films, are quite brilliantly staged by the great Yuen Wo Ping. All this attractive, bloody mayhem, the galloping absurdities of Luc Besson's script and Jet Li's reliable physical grace help make Unleashed the liveliest bad film of the season.
