Unleashed, starring Jet Li is set in Glasgow. I don’t just know this because I recognised parts of Glasgow in the background. The characters actually say it. One is studying at the School of Music (though seems vastly under qualified to do so, being on Grade 3 piano as far as I can work out). But you would never know that Glasgow was in Scotland from the characters.
I know we are living in multi-cultural Britain. And it is quite possible for a leading gangster to be a cockney. And it could be quite possible for his henchmen to all be English too. It starts becoming less plausible that everyone he extorts is English as well. Equally I have no problem with an American being at the School of Music and living with her American step-father (though the fees on a blind piano tuners pay must be crippling). And an orphaned Chinese boy could easily be left behind. However all these characters seem to exist in a vacuum of Glaswegians.
EVEN THE WOMAN WHO WORKS IN THE SPAR IS NOT SCOTTISH!
This, of course, adds to the films fun value. As do the absolutely terrific Jet Li fights (especially the one in the toilet). Bob Hoskins chews the scenery magnificently as the bad guy and the very generic plot manages via the leads acting (especially Li’s) to be both convincing and affecting. It is, be warned, a very strangely paced film. It is a U rated tender film about a man raised as a dog, sandwiched by a brutal martial arts film. It works because both bits of this sandwich are acted and filmed with complete conviction.
They should have stuck with the original title though. Danny The Dog is a great name for a film.