Jet Li's Unleashed & Fearless Share A Secret Story Connection

screenrant.com:

Jet Li’s movies Unleashed and Fearless have a shared theme of the adverse effects of violence, and they each use that story connection in different ways. Showcasing Jet Li's incredible skill in martial arts, Unleashed and Fearless were released in 2005 and 2006, respectively, with the latter positioned as Li’s final kung fu epic. Despite their surface-level differences, Unleashed and Fearless espouse the same message, utilizing intense martial arts battles as their tool for doing so.

In Unleashed, Li plays Danny, a man held captive by loan shark Bart (Bob Hoskins) and trained to attack his enemies like a rabid dog when his collar is removed. Fearless is a fictionalized re-telling of Chinese folk hero Huo Yuanjia, the Chin Woo Athletic Association founder. Similarly, Fearless tells its own tale of Huo as an arrogant fighter who learns a new path of pacificism, with both he and Danny shedding their once violent lifestyles in their respective movies.

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After a misunderstanding between rival kung fu schools leads to his family being killed, Huo finds himself soul-searching in a manner not unlike Danny when he’s unexpectedly freed from Jet Li's best Hollywood villain Bart. Unleashed and Fearless curiously complement each other by how they place Danny and Huo at opposite ends of the violence spectrum. Danny is a man forced to be violent, while Huo relishes it.

Both Danny and Huo have their eyes opened by realizing what they’ve lost and meeting new people who teach them kindness. While the circumstances of their beginnings and their change are different, both Danny and Huo come to realize, as Danny puts it, “I don’t want to hurt people anymore.”