'The Furious' Review: Brutal Action Movie of the Year
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- Kenji Tanigaki directed 'The Furious,' his follow-up to 'Enter the Fat Dragon,' with action choreography by Kensuke Sonomura ('Baby Assassins') and a script from four Hong Kong writers (Mak Tin-shu, Lei Zhilong, Shum Kwan-sin, and Frank Hui)
- Joe Taslim and Xie Miao star as a grieving journalist and a non-verbal tradesman who team up to rescue his kidnapped daughter from child traffickers in an unnamed Southeast Asian city, with the film shot on the streets of Bangkok, Thailand
- Yayan Ruhian ('The Raid') plays a bow-wielding villain who never changes out of his 'Royal Tenenbaums' tracksuit, while Thai action star Jija Yanin plays Taslim's wife, a journalist killed with an arrow to the head early in the film
- Reviewer praises the film's fusion of Chinese martial arts, Pencak Silat, Muay Thai, Eddy Gordo-style capoeira, and MMA, with standout setpieces including a fight inside an industrial freezer using ice-encased corpses as props and a tenement-complex sequence reimagining the 'Oldboy' hallway fight as a motorcycle drive-by
- Brian Le ('Everything Everywhere All at Once' stuntman) plays a standout 250lb., 'sweetly imbecilic' crime boss's 'son' in a flatbed-truck brawl, described as one of the film's best sequences
- Reviewer calls it 'the action movie of the year so far as American theatergoers should be concerned,' but flags the main villain (Joey Iwanaga) as underdeveloped and the story as 'getting a little busy for its own good' in the back half
- IndieWire notes the film is 'too sloppy to stand alongside the true masterpieces of its genre' but praises its 'vision and variety' that prevents fight fatigue, striking a balance between 'the slapstick insanity of Jackie Chan and the more punishing barbarity of his successors'
Why it matters: The film assembles a notable cross-Asian martial arts ensemble — 'The Raid' alumni Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian, Chinese wushu champion Xie Miao, and Thai star Jija Yanin — and is the rare genre release reviewed as a serious choreographic achievement rather than disposable fare, though reviewer David Ehrlich flags an underdeveloped main villain and a cluttered second half that prevent it from joining the genre's true masterpieces.
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