Synopsis:When his daughter is kidnapped and the police fail him, a father teams with a journalist to unleash vengeance in a brutal martial arts showdown.
Stars: Xie Miao, Joe Taslim, Yang Enyou, Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Manatsanun Phanlerdwongsakul, Guo Junqing, Winai Wiangyangkung, Yayan Ruhian, Jija Yanin
Director: Kenji Tanigaki
Rated: R
Running Length: 113 minutes
Movie Review in Brief: The Furious is the most exciting practical-stunt action movie since The Raid, a pan-Asian fight showcase that hits hard and rarely lets up. The dubbing and thin script keep it from perfection, but the choreography alone is worth the ticket. See it big, see it loud
The Furious Review: Everything Is a Weapon
Hong Kong built its legend on a simple promise: real bodies, real impact, no faking. The Furious honors that promise and then breaks a few of your favorite bones with it. After a TIFF Midnight Madness run that had crowds roaring, the film hits US screens with a reputation that precedes every punch, and here’s the short version of this review of The Furious: it’s equal parts rave and fair warning. The rave first: you haven’t seen a fight movie move like this in years.
Director Kenji Tanigaki, fresh off the fight choreography for Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, teams with action director Kensuke Sonomura to chase one goal: the ultimate martial arts film. They get scary close. Every brawl plays out in long, wide takes that refuse to hide the work. The camera holds. The hits land. You wince, then you grin.
The Plan Is Simple. The Damage Isn't.
The plot is an engine, not a destination. A mute handyman (Xie Miao, My Father Is a Hero) drifts through a Southeast Asian city, fixing what’s broken and saying nothing about where he came from. The movie won’t even hand us his name, Wang Wei, until its final stretch, and the past he refuses to discuss stays a closed door the whole way through. What’s not a mystery is how much he loves his daughter Rainy (Yang Enyou, Lighting Up the Stars). He’s a devoted dad and an insecure one, fumbling to connect with a headstrong kid who needs more than his silence can give. They fight, and she storms off on her own. That ordinary, lousy little spat turns out to be the last good moment they get.
It doesn’t stay small for long. A gang that traffics children grabs Rainy right off the street, and Wei sees the whole thing happen. He just can’t reach her in time. He fights, he chases, and he still watches them drive away with his girl. The police are worse than useless, so Wei does the only thing a man with his particular skill set can do. He works the scraps they left at the scene, and from there, he goes through every single person standing between him and his daughter.
His path crosses Navin (Joe Taslim, The Raid: Redemption), a journalist working a case that was never really his. His wife, Matia (Jeeja Yanin, the Thai action legend from Chocolate), was the reporter on it first, digging into this same trafficking network long after Navin begged her to drop it and come home. She didn’t, and then she vanished. Now he’s chasing her leads and her ghost at once. He and Wei don’t shake hands and team up. They beat the daylights out of each other first, then realize they’re pointed at the same enemy. When they finally fight side by side, their combined fury feels less like an alliance and more like a natural disaster.
What Sonomura does with these set pieces borders on the absurd, in the best way. Wei treats the whole body as the weapon, all shoulders, hips, and body checks. In one beat he stacks fallen goons into a human pyramid to get the high ground on the next wave. Ladders, hammers, wooden pallets, and yes, bicycles all become instruments of persuasion. This is choreography as bloodsport, built by someone who clearly thinks a wide shot is the bravest thing in cinema.
A Pan-Asian Murderers' Row
Nearly all of the assembled cast is required to perform some version of Sonomura’s kinetic choreography. Miao was a child action star in 1990s Hong Kong, and his comeback as Wei gives the film a soul to match the spectacle. He never speaks. He signs, he stares, and somehow that’s enough. Taslim, the breakout terror of The Raid: Redemption, brings the charm Wei can’t, a loose, funny warmth that keeps the grime from swallowing the movie.
The villains are a buffet of menace. Brian Le (Everything Everywhere All at Once) plays Ho, a bald wall of a henchman who refuses to stay down. Joey Iwanaga (Enter the Fat Dragon) seems almost mild until the sensational finale unhooks something deranged in him. Pencak Silat legend Yayan Ruhian shows up as a bow-wielding killer named Tak, and if you know him as Mad Dog from The Raid: Redemption and its sequel, you already know to be scared.
Young Enyou might be the real surprise. She’s asked to do far more than scream and wait for rescue. She fights, she breaks, she grows up fast, and her bond with Wei gives the carnage a pulse. She’s the only female role that’s given much in the way of purpose, even Manatsanun Phanlerdwongsakul‘s wiley police officer doesn’t come online until too late and has a small window to be valiant. More often than not, The Furious is a boys club.
Kenji Tanigaki Builds a Better Brawl
Tanigaki keeps the thing sprinting. He rarely lets you catch a breath, and that’s a feature, not a flaw. His method is old-school on purpose. Hold the frame, let the take run long, and trust the actors to be amazing instead of editing amazement into being.
Meteor Cheung‘s cinematography (yes, that’s his real name, and yes, it rules) knows when to crowd a fight and when to step back and let it breathe. He gets inside the scrum without losing the geography, which is harder than it looks. Editor Chris Tonick (Trigger Warning) cuts with respect for the choreography, letting the hits glow instead of chopping them into confetti.
The score from Elliot Leung, Olivia Xiaolin, and Flying Lotus (the musician who directed last year’s Ash) pulses underneath without ever drowning out the real soundtrack here: grunts, gasps, and the wet thud of a fist finding a face.
It’s not flawless. The CGI blood is the one real eyesore, and it’s a strange one. It doesn’t read as blood so much as molten red velvet cake batter, splattering a little too well and arcing a little too perfectly to nail the shot. In one sequence that needed no help at all, it pulled me right out.
The One Thing That Keeps Tripping It Up
Now the warnings, two of them. First, the dubbing. The Furious is sold as an English-language film, with Mandarin, Thai, and Tagalog dubbed in around it, and that patchwork doesn’t hold. The English is sparse and clunky, and it kept yanking me out of scenes that were otherwise rolling. When the cast speaks their own languages, the movie sings. When it pivots to dubbed English for the subtitle-averse, it stumbles. The script was never going to win awards, but the dubbing makes a thin thing feel thinner.
The second warning is heavier, and I want to be plain about it. The film’s villains traffic children, and while The Furious never wallows in that horror or plays it for cheap shock, there’s real physical and emotional violence aimed at kids here. If that subject hits close to home, it will be hard to sit with. The movie handles it with more care than exploitation, but go in knowing it’s part of the deal.
A Father, His Fury, and a Reason to Care
Underneath all the broken furniture, The Furious is about a parent who’d tear the world apart for his kid. That primal love gives the mayhem a reason to exist, and it’s rarer in this genre than it should be. The film also lands a sneaky-sharp point about systems that shield the powerful and abandon everyone else, leaving ordinary people to win justice with their bare hands.
We’re heading into blockbuster season, and familiar IP is filling every screen. It bums me out that my local multiplex buried this on one screen with only two evening showings. Both were packed. That tells me what I already knew. This is big-screen cinema, made to be felt loud, sitting shoulder to shoulder with strangers. If this comes off sounding like a plea, that’s because it is one. Do yourself an enormous favor and find it.
The Furious
It’s wild, it’s mean, and it’s mad as hell. It’s also the most fun I’ve had ducking a hammer in a very long time.
Looking for something? Search for it here! Try an actor, movie, director, genre, or keyword!
