Danny is a slave to his uncle Bart. Literally. Reared like a caged animal, Bart exerts complete control over Danny via a simple collar worn round the young man's neck. With the collar in place, Danny is completely submissive, doing and saying nothing and literally waiting for the command to go into action. When the command comes, it is a simple one. The collar is removed and Danny is told to "Get em!". And so he does. Punching, kicking and screaming until every one of his targets is on the floor. It's a very effective technique, and one that has kept Bart in business for a very long time. After one particularly fraught episode, Danny's potential is spotted by an unscrupulous businessman who lures Bart with the promise of huge winnings on the underground fight network. Yes, for Bart business is good. For Danny, it's pretty miserable, but that's nothing new.

Sadly, the trouble with trouble is that a trouble shared isn't always a trouble halved. Sometimes, it's just a trouble shared. And soon Danny's old life comes crashing in on his new one.

Unleashed is curious in the first instance because, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of the cast has a London accent, the film is set in Glasgow. This wasn't initially something that occurred to me, but as soon as the action switched to the very famous jewellery arcade, I realised at once that we weren't in London. To Glaswegians, of course, it will be an entirely offensive observation, born of the fact that a mainstream audience would be deemed incapable of understanding a Scottish accent, hence even the old lady in the cornershop is a Cockney. Perhaps the director (Louis Leterrier) should have considered setting the film in London's East End, given that Bob Hoskins (Bart) seems completely out of place in any other setting. But ultimately, it doesn't really matter because Glasgow was probably cheaper to use and this film certainly isn't about where things happen.

But then colour comes into the film and into Danny's life. As he shares his new life with Sam and his stepdaughter Victoria, the colour literally starts to seep back into the film. Suddenly, the city isn't such a gloomy place and even the simplest of pleasures seem to light up the screen, like a yellow melon or a warm bowl of soup. It's a simple, yet startlingly effective technique that plays to the audience like a simple, hypnotic concerto. It's just a shame that, rather deliberately, we are all simply waiting until the colour drains from Danny's face once more and his past life comes back to haunt him.
If you are expecting another Jet Li martial arts movie. Unleashed probably isn't quite what you would think but there are similarities with other movies. The protectiveness of Kiss of the Dragon is there and the affection of opposites attract is just as strong as it was in Romeo Must Die. What Besson and Leterrier have done, however, is try to make something a little more thoughtful. Hey, in this world, it's not cool to kill, OK? The trouble is that the fact is this is exactly what the audience wants Jet Li to do. Is it only Uncle Bart who is willing the Dog to smash his opponents' brains in with a sledgehammer, when that's exactly what he shouldn't do? Indeed, is that a suggestion that Unleashed is perhaps cleverer than you might think? What if this is not just about Danny being unleashed? Perhaps it's about the fact that inside every single one of us is a Dog waiting to be unleashed?

Morgan Freeman is a welcome, if not slightly surprising choice for the blind piano teacher, Sam, Freeman seems to opt more for the endearing end of the character scale these days and in Unleashed he exerts a gentle wisdom and superiority across the proceedings that is as irritating as it is welcome. The blind bit is a bit gratuitous for my liking - why could someone only show Danny kindness because they couldn't see him? - but Freeman is as capable as ever and injects life into the character in a way that few other actors could.