UNLEASHED "Poignant" and "touching" aren't words usually associated with a Jet Li flick, but Unleashed isn't your standard action yarn. That's not to say Li has completely gone the Sense and Sensibility route: Rest assured that fans of martial arts mayhem will leave satisfied with the bone crushing, rib cracking and face pounding on display. But Li tries to give a multi-faceted performance in this one, successfully eliciting sympathy in the role of Danny the Dog (the film's title during its European run). Danny has spent his life in the service of a ruthless Glasgow mobster known as Uncle Bart (Bob Hoskins), who makes Danny sleep in a cage, feeds him scraps of food and keeps him docile via a collar around his neck. But whenever Bart removes the collar (usually in the presence of deadbeats who owe him money), Danny turns into a savage beast who can pummel the opposition. A chain of circumstances allows him to escape from his master; he falls in with a blind piano tuner (Morgan Freeman) and his teenage stepdaughter (Kerry Condon), who eventually accept him as one of the family. Treated with respect and allowed to get in touch with his softer side, Danny adores his new life and is less than thrilled when Bart reappears, ready to reclaim his "pet." A handful of thrilling set pieces goose the proceedings, yet it's the acting that gives this its advantage: Freeman packs his usual authority, Condon is an absolute delight, and Hoskins clearly relishes the return to the UK underground milieu of his career-making films The Long Good Friday and Mona Lisa. And then there's Jet Li, whose puppy-dog demeanor as the domesticated Danny the Dog adds some tears to the expected blood and sweat.
Current Releases
THE AMITYVILLE HORROR Jay Anson's 1977 novel The Amityville Horror was such a worthless piece of literature that the only way it could have moved any copies was for its author and its limelight-soaking subjects to declare it was all based on a true story. That did the trick: The book, about a couple who insisted their house was haunted, became a best-selling phenomenon, though it was soon discredited as pure hokum. A clunky 1979 movie version followed, and now we get the remake, which manages to be even worse than its screen antecedent. Leads Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George try their best, but as a creep show, this slicked-up version is painfully inadequate, preferring to traffic in quick shots of blood-dripping ghouls than establishing any real sense of dread. I've seen episodes of Sesame Street that were more frightening than this generic junk.
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY It was only a matter of time before Douglas Adams' cult phenomenon - which had already moved from radio to print to television - would eventually complete the journey by edging into cinema. Yet as a movie, H2G2 is only a mixed bag, crammed with many inspired bits but never coalescing as a whole. Reminiscent of both Monty Python and The Fifth Element, the movie embodies a cheeky spirit that becomes harder to appreciate once the picture begins to buckle under the weight of an overly busy plot. Martin Freeman, Zooey Deschanel (as the only two humans to escape earth's destruction) and Mos Def (as a friendly alien) are appealing, but Sam Rockwell's grating turn as an intergalactic maniac is a detriment.
1/2
HOUSE OF WAX My contempt for this remake of the 1953 Vincent Price classic is so great, I'm reluctant to even call it a film, as that designation automatically places it in the pantheon of works by Welles, Hitchcock, Bergman and even Ed Wood. Suitable only for unemployable teens and speech-slurring rednecks, this follows a group of dim-witted college-age kids as they find themselves lost in the Louisiana wilds and become slasher fodder for murderous twin brothers. It takes an eternity of running time for the kids to reach the town, and even after the slaughter begins, director Jaume Collet-Serra and scripters Chad and Carey Hayes still take time out for an obligatory interlude that allows co-star Paris Hilton a chance to striptease down to her undies. Sadistic beyond compare, this House has been constructed by mercenaries, not moviemakers.
THE INTERPRETER An interpreter (Nicole Kidman) working at the United Nations overhears a plot to assassinate the tyrannical president of her African homeland, but the Secret Service agent (Sean Penn) assigned to the case thinks she's hiding more than she's revealing. As a thriller, The Interpreter never matches the sweaty-palms intensity of director Sydney Pollack's excellent Three Days of the Condor, though it largely gets the job done. But between the soft-hearted assessment of the UN, the creation of a fictional African nation to propel the narrative (why not employ an actual African country that's had to deal in modern times with ethnic cleansing?), and an ending that takes the easy way out, it's clear that the Sydney Pollack behind The Interpreter isn't the same Sydney Pollack behind Three Days of the Condor. Just because a man mellows with age doesn't mean his movies should.
1/2
KICKING & SCREAMING The "underdog sports comedy," which hasn't been run into the ground as much as it's been pureed in a top-model blender, travels as far as it probably can go these days in this immensely likable if somewhat toothless family film. Will Ferrell ably tackles his most complete role to date, as a wimpy dad who elects to coach a losing boys soccer team. As Ferrell's macho dad, Robert Duvall seems to have wandered in from a much more serious movie, and the usual sports flick cliches are repeated verbatim. What elevates the movie is Ferrell himself: While his patented shtick can often grow tiresome, here it's in the service of an actual character, and that seems to make all the difference. Rather than random acts of lunacy, the insecure Phil's outbursts are hardwired into his psyche, which allows us the luxury of feeling sorry for the guy even as we're laughing at him.
1/2
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN Aside from a smattering of one-note villains, everyone is so damn noble and respectful in director Ridley Scott's p.c. drama about a period in world history that was anything but noble and respectful. Set during the Crusades, this dutiful slog through revisionist history stars Orlando Bloom as a blacksmith who finds himself in the middle of a growing feud between Christians and Muslims both laying claim to Jerusalem. Comparisons to recent sword flicks like Troy and Scott's Gladiator are natural, but despite the lofty ambitions of William Monahan's arid script, such contrasts do this lumbering movie no favors. If nothing else, at least those other films moved; beyond that, they also featured morally ambiguous characters, handed juicy roles to veteran actors, and, in the case of Troy, made a stronger case for contemporary relevance. As the courageous Balian, Bloom has the heroic glower down pat but brings little else to the role.
LADIES IN LAVENDER The setting is 1930s Cornwall, as two elderly sisters (Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith) discover that a Polish violinist (Daniel Bruhl) has washed up on the beach next to their quaint little cottage. As they nurse him back to health, one of the sisters (Dench's Ursula) slowly begins to fall for this lad who's approximately a half-century her junior. Although it looks like a product straight off the Masterpiece Theatre assembly line, Ladies In Lavender is a movie marked by major surprises: It's surprising that the first half is so perceptive (Dench makes her character's confusion, despair and desire all equally tangible), and equally surprising that the second part is so preposterous (with developments as nonsensical as any found in mainstream claptrap).
1/2
A LOT LIKE LOVE A Lot Like Love is a lot like When Harry Met Sally crossed with Serendipity, as two people wonder whether they're better off remaining friends or whether the stars have something more intimate in mind for them. Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet play the part-time lovers, two strangers (they "meet cute" by wordlessly boffing in an airplane lavatory) who continually run into each other over the ensuing years. But rather than commit to each other and in effect get us out of the theater after a blessedly short half-hour, the pair keep bumping up against labored plot developments that drive them apart and insure at least one more trip to the concession stand. The stars are likable, but Colin Patrick Lynch's script never wholly convinces us that these two necessarily need to be together.
MINDHUNTERS For a movie that's been sitting in Miramax's storage bin for well over a year, Mindhunters isn't the train wreck one would have assumed. A high-tech update of Agatha Christie's classic Ten Little Indians (a.k.a. And Then There Were None), the story finds a band of FBI agents sent to a remote island off the coast of North Carolina, where they discover that there's a serial killer within their ranks. A couple of clues make it relatively easy to deduce the identity of the killer - a plus for those who'd like a shot at solving the mystery, a minus for those who prefer to be kept in the dark until the end. Regardless, the screenplay doesn't stand up to close scrutiny (each victim has to be in an exact location at an exact time for the villain's scheme to work), but director Renny Harlin has churned out a fairly engrossing film that doesn't denigrate the memory of its (uncredited) source material.
1/2
MONSTER-IN-LAW After a 15-year hiatus, Jane Fonda returns to the big screen, and young uns who've only heard about her standing as one of the finest actresses of the 1970s will automatically assume that their parents have been pulling their legs all these years. Fonda is an embarrassment in this torturous comedy, betrayed both by director Robert Luketic's mishandling and by her own rusty instincts. Blank-faced Jennifer Lopez stars as Charlie, a jill-of-all-trades (caterer, dog walker, receptionist) who finds the perfect man in Dr. Kevin Fields (Alias' Michael Vartan). All goes well until she meets his mother, a former TV personality who also turns out to be psychotic. This only escapes a one-star rating because of the acerbic wit of Wanda Sykes (cast as Fonda's wisecracking assistant); otherwise, the laughs are as scarce as Coke machines in the Kalahari.
1/2
STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH Better than their overall critical standing would have one believe, the new Star Wars flicks have nevertheless registered as disappointments to those of us for whom the original trilogy felt like a coming-of-age rite of passage. The Phantom Menace was a mixed bag, while Attack of the Clones (by a hair the best of the newbies) only occasionally managed to recapture the spirit and flavor of the original three-pack. This last chapter follows suit, a cinematic seesaw in which the good bits are packed into the second half. The movie gets off to a dreadful start, stuffed with chaotic chases, ill-defined new characters and the rapid elimination of a worthy foe. And then something inspiring occurs: The mythology takes over, and the latter sequences - directly connecting to events first recorded in the original Star Wars film back in 1977 - resonate beyond the screen, fueled as much by our own nostalgic twinges as by George Lucas' ability to send the series off in style.
1/2
OPENS FRIDAY:
THE LONGEST YARD: Adam Sandler, Chris Rock.
MADAGASCAR: Animated; Ben Stiller, Chris Rock.
Mobile
