Unleashed (2020) Review

Unleashed | Blu-ray (Bayview Entertainment)

Director: Ambrose Kwok
Co-director: Ka Hei Kwok
Cast: Sun Zhen-Feng, Ken Lo, Zheng Zi-Ping, Venus Wong, Sam Lee, Raymond Chiu
Running Time: 84 min. 

By Henry McKeand

There’s something quaint about Unleashed, the 2020 kickboxing film from Kwok Ka-Hei and Ambrose Kwok Yat-Choi. Then again, in a modern action climate dominated by assassins and digital blood spray, maybe there’s something quaint about all movies concerned mainly with competitions and training montages. But Unleashed, with its focus on saccharine melodrama and dated sense of 2000s cool, feels especially like a throwback to the days when cage fighting was a new underground subculture that filmmakers were desperate to capitalize on. This will be more than enough for certain fight fanatics; your mileage may vary.

Young boxer Fok Kit, played by newcomer Sun Zhen-Feng, isn’t much different from hundreds of other Karate Kid-lite heroes. He’s young and bull-headed and goodhearted. His coach, played by Jackie Chan stunt team vet Ken Lo, is about what you’d expect from his coach, who just wants the best for his students. When he’s threatened with the idea of losing his gym (no way!), he agrees to let Fok Kit fight an infamous Thai “killing machine” (Zheng Zi-Ping) in order to raise the money they need to keep their dojo. 

What follows is a journey of many, many ups and downs as near-crippling injuries threaten our heroes and old rivalries reemerge. This isn’t to mention the romance subplot involving an up-and-coming actress (Venus Wong) who comes to the gym to train for an action role even as she deals with harassment from a lecherous director. This story, while not uninteresting, takes up a sizable chunk of the only 84-minute runtime. Levity is usually a gift in this kind of film, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that Unleashed is rushing through the expected beats (and even some less expected ones). 

It’s not as if the narrative is a simple delivery method for fight scenes. In fact, there’s a surprisingly low amount of fighting for a production set explicitly in this world. This is the kind of movie that’s most interested in its fights as metaphors for coming-of-age lessons about perseverance and loyalty. This isn’t a problem per se, but the plot here isn’t strong enough to hold everything up. It’s almost as if they didn’t have the resources or the time to have several set pieces. For a movie called “Unleashed,” it sure feels a little reserved. 

When the boxers actually step into the ring, mainly at the beginning and end of the film, the results are mixed. The choreography is impressive, even if it doesn’t break the mold. The performers know what they’re doing, and there’s a visceral power to the grapples and takedowns. When two opponents are desperately grabbing each other on the mat, it feels as if you’re watching a real fight unfold. There are even some inspired camera movements, and the slow-motion sequences actually look decent.

The problem comes in the editing, which is sometimes too frantic for its own good. The trend of one-shot action scenes has been overdone to the point of ridiculousness, and there’s nothing wrong with using smart cuts to augment the choreography (just watch some classic Golden Harvest flicks to remind yourself), but Unleashed could have benefitted from slowing down and letting the choreo speak for itself.

No, the brawls here are a far cry from the other, unrelated Unleashed (Jet Li’s opening explosion of violence in that film is better than anything here), but the aesthetic is sometimes closer to 2005 than 2020. The cinematography lends it a modern, digital appearance, but the attempts to capture “street” culture through music and youth fashion are straight out of the twenty-aughts playbook. The soundtrack itself is a mix of 2011 rock and dubstep-adjacent EDM, and the pubescent masculinity of its “nightclub” fight scenes, complete with bikini-clad women dancing on tables, is reminiscent of early Fast and Furious entries. 

It’s mostly charming, even as it prompts eyerolls. All of the forced “swagger” quickly gives way to what is ultimately a family-friendly sports film about fighting for your found family. It’s a low-stakes movie that could serve as a respite from more violent, self-serious DTV entries on the market. Sadly, the lack of bold narrative choices or memorable combat ideas make it little more than a pleasant diversion. 

Henry McKeand’s Rating: 5/10