The Furious Review: Hit ’Em Everywhere It Hurts

A truly pan-Asian affair, The Furious is a curious hybrid of Indonesian action flick brutality and Hong Kong two-fisted sentimentality. Half The Raid: Redemption and half Armour of God, the influence of The Raid is obvious from the casting of that film’s breakout stars, Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian, who are reunited to bonecracking effect. Taslim plays Navin, an investigative journalist and hard-hitting seeker of vengeance on the trail of the gang of child slavers who he is sure murdered his wife. In fact, they did, as shown in the opening sequence in which Rahan’s mad dog enforcer puts an arrow in her.

If that sounds like an exotic and antiquated choice of weaponry for a modern martial arts movie, it’s because anything can become a tool of destruction: a hammer, a knife, a crate, bike chains, garbage bags, frozen bodies. Anything that a seemingly nameless and mute Chinese migrant (Xie Miao, Ip Man: The Awakening) can lay his hands on as his daughter, Rainy (Yang Enyou), is one of the children that’s been abducted. Of course, Navin and the mute man have a devastating battle before they realize they’re actually on the same side. What kind of director would Japanese-born director Kenji Tanigaki (Enter the Fat Dragon) if he didn’t have Joe Taslim and Xie Miao go toe-to-toe for at least a while? Negligent, that’s what, and he most definitely isn’t.

In fact, The Furious assembles one of the most entertaining assortments of modern martial arts action stars imaginable and then creates scenarios that allow them to have at it in every conceivable combination. Taslim’s style has evolved since even 2018’s nihilist epic The Night Comes for Us from Sony Chiba-influenced bludgeoning juggernaut into something more fluid, keeping opponents at arm’s reach until he comes in for the kill. By contrast, Xie’s street fighter is literally down and dirty, often sliding along the floor to get out of harm’s way or deliver a painful blow. Opposing them is an army of the most entertainingly disposable gangsters since Oh Dae-su buried the hatchet in Oldboy, with a handful of distinctive bosses to give them a real challenge. American bulldozer Brian Le (Everything Everywhere All at Once) has bulked up as a former cage fighter with a knockout punch and CTE, while Joey Iwanaga (Baby Assassins 2) has a cobra’s speed and sharp fangs as a seemingly respectable businessman with a dark secret. Throw in Rahan’s sneering rat of a man and shake up for every possible pairing, three-way, or free-for-all brawl.

That’s what stops this surprisingly simple and linear plot from ever getting boring. The Furious may basically be two hours of fight scenes running together, but Tanagaki knows how to make that thrilling. He holds the shot to capture just how jaw-dropping the fight choreography by action director Kensuke Sonomura truly is, but this is no elegant dance. There’s a sense of struggle and sloppiness that really reenforces the feeling that everyone’s just trying to pummel the other guy to death as fast as possible. Ridiculously durable as the characters are (at one point, the mute father gets hit by a truck and basically walks it off), they also feel mortal.

That’s where that Hong Kong heart comes in, much of growing from the mute man’s love for his adorable tyke of a daughter – although, that said, she’s pretty nifty in a fight too. That caltrop didn’t fall far from the tree. 

Tanagaki enters the upper ranks of action directors with The Furious. Yet just as he’s adept at melding wildly different martial arts disciplines into one breathtaking whole, he manages to meld those mawkish aspects into the action to create a story that’s oddly wholesome. That said, it’s definitely not for the kids, even if they’re at the bruised heart of The Furious.

The Furious

2026, R, 113 mins. Directed by Kenji Tanigaki. Starring Xie Miao, Joe Taslim, Yang Enyou, Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga, Yayan Ruhian.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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