I added “Danny the Dog” to my list of movies to watch because it was one of the most mentioned Jet Li movies. So I didn’t expect anything but a good action out of it when I pressed the playback button.
Directed by: Louis Leterrier
Genres: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Cast: Jet Li, Morgan Freeman, Bob Hoskins, Kerry Condon, Vincent Regan, Dylan Brown, Tamer Hassan, Michael Jenn, Phyllida Law, Carole Ann Wilson, Michael Ian Lambert, Jaclyn Lee, Puthirith Chou, Tony Theng, Owen Lay
IMDB raintg: 7.2
My rating: 8.5 [rate 8.5]
It turned out to be much more than just an action movie. Much more.
The film is one of those excellent creations when the best of many worlds are mixed into one.
The script was written by Luc Besson. This guy sure knows how to write scripts. Consider “Nikita“, “Léon“, and “The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc” as examples of his work. I won’t be going too far by saying that drama wrapped into lots of blood is one of his trademarks.
The director – Louis Leterrier – doesn’t have a long list of movies behind his back yet, but he practiced his directing skills on “The Transporter“, which, by the way, was scripted by Luc Besson.
Now, what these guys needed were a couple of celebrity actors – someone from the martial arts world and someone from the dramatic action movies world. I don’t know how, but they made an excellent choice for both vacancies.
Morgan Freeman brought in a lot of experience as he played a good guy. Making him blind and backing it up with all the history was a good touch in the drama department.
Jet Li is about as good as you can get in movie martial arts celebrities these days. So he was too. His character was also along his usual lines, but far more complicated than usual. I have to say that Jet did a hell of a job with his acting. It was by far the most complicated part that I’ve seen him performing. Oh, and he was great with his martial arts too. As usual. But that’s what they are paying him for, aren’t them?
And just to make sure that everything would work right – one more guy was brought in, who never appeared on the screen, but played an important part in the making of this movie – Woo-ping Yuen. He is also a celebrity. He is most known for his excellent skills in martial arts choreography. You can see his name in the credits of such blockbasters as two Kill Bill movies and Matrix trilogy.
With all these people involved in the film it was pretty darn hard to make anything bad. And so they didn’t. Instead they created a masterpiece. Really. Interesting story with some great drama and lots of outstanding martial arts – you don’t get to see these in one movie every day, do you?