One time, in Portland

we were in desperate need of an air conditioned environment, so we found ourselves at a Jet Li film called Unleashed (or Danny the Dog if you were in Australia at the time (we were not (we were in Portland (Good God, have I already lost you? I just started this post...)))).

The premise was this: A small Asian boy becomes the slave of a British crime lord played by Bob Hoskins. The small Asian boy is not played by Bob Hoskins. He plays the crime lord. This is not a porn. The boy turns out to be a fighting machine because, of course, he (Danny) will grow up to be Jet Li. The crime lord then raises him as a dog, forcing him to participate in caged dog fights to make money off of him. This is still not a porn. Sicko. Years later, he tries to escape his indentured life. Several martial arty fight scenes transpire.

The trailer for said movie made it seem like many other martial arts films that I've resisted over the years because I find them neither romantic nor comedic and those are, for the most part, what I feel like watching all of the time. But I stayed.

The thing was, it wasn't just another Jet Li fighting movie. What the trailer never shows are scenes where he's ripped from the home he loves, thrown into a cage at a young age, beaten and humiliated by a small man with a cockney accent and forced to eat dog gruel. The first twenty minutes of the movie are several instances of people depriving Danny of the human experience. He hears no music, he reads no words, he touches only to destroy or to get beaten. I'm making it sound really maudlin and melodramatic, but only to justify the fact that I started crying twenty minutes into this movie and then didn't stop. I cried during the funny parts. I cried during the fighting scenes. I cried during the credits. I cried. For three hours. After the movie.

Chad didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do. I hugged our dog for about an hour, watching Comedy Central. I couldn't talk because the crying was restricting my breathing. Chad excused himself and watched sports at a bar. Pippin jumped off the hotel bed and chased her tail. I cried watching part of Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Chad came back. I was still crying.

I didn't know how to explain it and still don't. I have never had that kind of a reaction to anything that didn't involve me falling down a flight of concrete stairs and landing on my chin then getting stitches without medication because we thought I was allergic.

And then we saw The Dark Knight. Be proud of me -- I didn't cry through the whole movie. Actually, I didn't cry through any of it. But I was extraordinarily shaken for the next two days.

I think in both cases, there was something at the core of those movies that resonated in my core. The potential for hope and joy marred by a disgusting amount of cruelty or lack of...what...? Lack of respect for life, maybe, but more than that. Indifference? Not sure.

Pretty sure I could watch 10 Things I Hate About You a few times in one night, though.