Warm and fuzzy but with fangs

Something strange and unexpected happens partway through “Unleashed,” the new Jet Li martial arts film.

The stylized world of male brutality and violence abruptly halts and, for a half-hour or so, the story is dominated by the friendship between Li’s character and an exuberant young woman with auburn hair, braces and a love for piano. She teaches him to love Mozart, savor vanilla ice cream, eat properly at the dining table, and even appreciate an endearing kiss. It’s a sweet performance by Irish actress Kerry Condon -- all the more memorable because it seems to belong more in a girl-friendly Disney movie than an action film.

And then, when it’s over, the plot twists back to the violence that started it.

In the film, Li plays an orphaned young man, Danny, raised like a dog by a viciously grandiloquent Glasgow mobster (Bob

Hoskins) who first uses him as a deadly

enforcer and then enters him in illegal

fight-to-the-death matches. He escapes after thinking his mentor has died, finding refuge with a blind piano tuner (Morgan Freeman) and his stepdaughter, played by Condon. Ultimately, Danny’s new life is tested by old foes who want him to resume fighting.

Written by Luc Besson (“The Professional”) and directed by Louis Leterrier (“The Transporter”), “Unleashed” is a gritty crime drama, a low-key family film and, at times, a Frankenstein-like fable -- with cutting-edge martial arts choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping (“The Matrix”).

Leterrier, speaking on the phone from Paris, said the mixture of elements caused the film, already in theaters in France, to have difficulties finding a U.S. distributor. It’s being released by Rogue Pictures, the genre division of Focus Features.

“I saw it with French audiences, people used to Jet Li films, the first week it came out,” he said. “They were thrown by the film. They thought it would be just another [Jet Li action ... ] film. But for a half-hour, Jet Li doesn’t fight.”

Leterrier and Besson wanted an experienced but not famous young actress to work with Li, Freeman and Hoskins.

“If she was a supermodel, it would have not worked out. Kerry is an excellent actress and yet very shy.”

The 23-year-old actress made her screen debut in 1999’s “Angela’s Ashes.” She subsequently worked in several movies not widely seen in the U.S. -- “Ned Kelly,” “Rat” -- as well as the TV series “Ballykissangel.” “Unleashed” marks her biggest film. She has been working on Michael Apted’s HBO/BBC miniseries “Rome,” in which she plays Caesar’s niece.

“The way we were filmed [in “Unleashed”], I never saw any of the martial arts stuff,” Condon said by telephone from her home in East London. “It was like we were on a totally different film -- two completely different worlds.”

-- Steven Rosen