“Every movie needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.” This quote is by a famous film maker called Jean-Luc Godard, he believed that every film has a structure: BEGINNING : MIDDLE : END or you could call it ESTABLISH : CRISIS : RESOLVE. In the first ACT we establish what is happening around us. We get placed into the scene and find out who we are, where we are and what are we doing. This act would usually last around 30 minutes say for a typical two hour movie. In Louis Leterriers unleashed the first ACT introduces us to the main character Danny (played by Jet Li) who has been held captive since he was young to use his martial art skills to beat up/kill those who have wronged the boss.
You could argue that there are two points in this movie that lead to the start of Act 2 being;
When he first runs away after a car accident in which he thinks that the boss dies.
When they find him after becoming part of another family they capture him again.
I prefer to think of the second crisis as the start of ACT 2 because I believe that the end of ACT 1 occurs when the protagonist makes a commitment and or decision that leads into the main action of the movie ACTS 2 and 3. The second crisis follows this theory well whereas the first leads us into more character development and not the main action.
ACT 3 is how you resolve the crisis, in this case is when Danny decides he has to fight to protect his family. In a 3-ACT movie, the external changes are often accompanied by an "inner story" in which the protagonist being Danny changes or grows emotionally. The "inner story" of unleashed is about Danny becoming human because, all his life he was treated like a dog and trained to kill so at the end when he has the choice to kill the boss or leave him knowingly that he killed his mother he is really choosing whether to carry on living the way he has been or becoming human.
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