So I just finished watching Unleashed, and what an experience it was. After all the reviews I thought it would be a lot gorier than it actually was. All in all I was pretty impressed, cinematography was excellent, story was excellent (well the screenplay was by Luc Besson, so what do you expect?) and the music by Massive Attack was pretty cool as well. What I was most impressed by was Jet Li’s acting, looks like he’s a bit more than just a mindless martial artist like Van Damme, etc. Well I’m not a film critic so I think that review should stop there. I do have to say however that if I had known Luc Besson was involved in Unleashed I would have dragged my lazy arse out of the house and watched this movie when it first came out in the cinemas. Besson is in my opinion one of the finest filmmakers out there, Leon for one has a similar mix of sensitivity and violence to Unleashed. In both films the violence, though it is very graphic does not overwhelm the film. The characters as well in both films are amazing, in any other movie apart from Besson’s Bart in Unleashed and Stansfield in Leon would be comical, but not in those two movies. That is of course in no small part due to the genius of Bob Hoskins and Gary Oldman.
If I had to pick a movie that I really love out of the many that I’ve watched it would have to be Le Grand Bleu (The Big Blue, not to be confused with the crap Deep Blue), also by Luc Besson. This movie has an amazing soundtrack, composed by Eric Serra. The soundtrack neatly encapsulates the soul of the 80’s, a decade of which I’m irresistibly fond of. Any time I hear the soundtrack I’m overcome by a wave of delicious nostalgia. The film itself is magical and has an ethereal, timeless sense. The ambiguous ending is another triumph, leaving the story unfulfilled but with a sense that Jacques has finally reached somewhere that he belongs. All in all one of the finest movies I’ve seen, now if I can only find a copy of the director’s cut in Sri Lanka.
