Danny is the vicious attack dog that unflinchingly does the brutal bidding of his Glasgow gangster master Bob Hoskins.

The twist here is that Danny isn't a blindly obedient hell hound…but a feral orphan raised as an unquestioning enforcer by debt-collector Bart (Hoskins).

Kept in a grilled "kennel" beneath Bart's warehouse office, Danny (Jet Li) can be relied upon to leave a roomful of reluctant payers picking up their shattered teeth with broken arms.

However, a chance meeting with Morgan Freeman's kindly blind piano tuner during a gang swoop on a warehouse lights in the canine killer a flickering flame of humanity.

Of course, Bart's not too happy with this turn of events... especially as he's lined Danny up for a lucrative if illegal "fight to the death" bout for the benefit of Glasgow's underworld.

Luc Besson - a film-maker wallowing at the pit of his powers after classics like The Fifth Element and Leon - has crafted the sort of story that wouldn't have got through a storyline meeting of The Bill.

Even at a modest 90 minutes, it still strains the patience with its uneasy mix of cutesy family (Morgan and his nubile daughter Kerry Condon) and spine-shattering martials arts, courtesy of Matrix choreographer Yuen Wo Ping.

The action setpieces turn the tum with more gouts of blood than you can shake an iron bar at while the would-be tenderness of Danny's adoptive family makes the Waltons look like the Krays.

In its favour, Glasgow's gritty side streets make an attractively bleak backdrop and Hoskins displays that gimlet-eyed cruelty we haven't seen since The Long Good Friday.

All in all, though, it's a bit of a rambling mess despite the best attentions of The Transporter's Louis Leterrier, a director on firmer ground with pure action.

Unleashed is best kept on a tight lead.

Tim Evans.