Why didn’t Jet Li’s role as Danny the dog alongside Morgan Freeman in the 2005 movie Unleashed open the doors of Hollywood for the Chinese actor?

It’s all filmed in the post-industrial suburbs of Glasgow – all rain-soaked factories and sweltering humidity – and it’s not that you’ll hear any Scottish accents.

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On this basis alone, Unleashed It should seem like the perfect opportunity.

Brutal loan shark Bart (Hoskins) keeps Danny (Lee) caged and chained, using him as a human attack dog to harm people who refuse to pay.

Between assignments, we see Danny leafing through a children’s book, his inner life illustrated in pictures of the things he lacks: K for kissing, L for love, M for mother, P for piano, and so on.

When a mysterious gangster (Michael Jane) sees Danny in action, he invites Bart to get him into an underground fight club.

After stopping the collar, Danny kills his opponent with three quick punches to the head and tells him to compete again another day.

As a reward, Bart offers him anything he wants, but he only asks for a piano. “That’s what I love about you, Danny,” Bart says. “One idea at a time.”

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Later while working in a furniture warehouse, Danny finds himself in a room full of musical instruments. Here he meets blind pianist Sam (Freeman), who treats him kindly.

“Pianos are a lot like humans,” Sam purred. “You’re bombarding someone who’s out of their league.”

Later, when Bart is nearly killed by one of his debtors (Vincent Reagan), Danny is taken in by Sam and his stepdaughter Victoria (Kerry Condon), a music student who teaches him how to play.

But then, when a traumatized Danny begins to open up and search for clues about his past, Bart comes looking for him.

Although nearly 20 minutes pass before he utters a single word — and even then it’s just a simple “yes” — Lee gives an expressive, child-likely charming performance.

Freeman and Hoskins are excellent as always, but they could play these roles in their sleep. Meanwhile, Condon does her best American accent (she’s Irish) and wears, eerily, corsets and knee-high stockings to make her look younger.

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While Leterrier’s direction is effective – there’s a beautiful patch of matches from the sand flowing from a broken punching bag into the pouring Glasgow rain – the guiding hand is Besson’s.

His films are often about mute killers looking for some kind of connection, and he has a skill when it comes to sexualizing younger women.

In his 30s, Besson dated 15-year-old French actor Maiwine, with whom he had great success in 1994. LeonIt featured a 12-year-old girl (Natalie Portman) who falls in love with her middle-aged protector (Jean Reno).

In the years since, he has been accused of much worse crimes, but was acquitted of rape charges in June 2023. However, Bart’s quote: “Keep ’em young and the possibilities are endless” resonates for all the wrong reasons.

Although fight scenes are few and far between, when they do come, Yuen’s character-based kinetics are on display.

“At first, Danny was fighting like an animal,” Lee told IGN. So we see him pulling out strands of hair and smashing heads with concrete – a far cry from the elegant wuxia with which Yuen made his name.

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“But as he grows older and when he understands a little about life and his own personality, he gains control over his body and knows he doesn’t want to hurt people.”

If the final film is more of a hybrid than an original, that’s to be expected, but it received good reviews and grossed $50 million worldwide. While Lee was praised for his performance, it did not give him much opportunity to diversify into Western cinema.

“The truth is, whether it’s a studio in Asia or America, they’re a business, and they look at you (and) they see that you’re already proving that you can make action movies, and you just make action movies and keep going, keep going,” he said.

In other words, be a good boy, otherwise.