Watch Movies Online: Jet Li In Unleashed

Unleashed, or as it was known in every country besides the United States, Danny the Dog, was one of Jet Li's last kung fu movies and one of his best made in the English language. The film is all about the concepts of family, personal freedom and dignity, and it really completely invents its own style of martial arts from the ground up. It's definitely worth a watch the next time you want to watch movies online and see some great chop socky action.

The movie focuses on a young man named Danny. He's been raised as a dog for his entire life by Uncle Bart, played with incredible sleaze by the one and only Bob Hoskins. What's interesting here is that, yes, Danny is a slave, but there's some real love shared between himself and his crime boss, loan shark master, Uncle Bart. It's not a healthy love, but they do have some love for each other.

There's a very clever gimmick at play here, in that Danny wears a collar that placates him. When it's on, he's civil, peaceful and quiet. When it's off, he attacks like a rabid beast. Uncle Bart uses this to control him and use him to intimidate his loan sharking clients. Danny's objective, then, is to overcome the collar and learn how to think for himself and nobody else.

The movie really kicks off of course when Danny escapes Uncle Bart and finds his way into the home of a kindly blind piano tuner played by Morgan Freeman. Freeman and his daughter take the time to teach Danny about the power of love, family and music. This serves as a sharp contrast to the darker relations between Danny and Bart.

There's a lot of familiar territory here, as Danny beats up all the badguys and they all have a happy ending, but there's a lot of emotional depth and complexity thanks to the fascinating premise. It's an old story: Dog escapes his cruel master for a loving master, but doing this story with a human in place of the dog helps to create something that feels new and fresh.

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.