The Furious Review

The good news is that the Academy is finally introducing an Oscar for Stunt Design. The bad news is that it won’t arrive in time to recognize Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious. From the John Wick movies, to The Raid, to RRR, sometimes I feel like I’ve seen everything the action genre can possibly throw at the audience. Then a film like The Furious comes along, punching my expectations into oblivion. It’s an experience that hits the ground running and never stops from there. Whenever a fight seems to be wrapping up, it’s just warming up, raising the stakes with each blow the characters deliver.

The premise is simple, although the execution is like a juggling act on a tight rope that could snap with one wrong move. Xie Miao is Wang Wei, a supposedly ordinary man who, of course, has a mysterious past. It’s never spelled out what happened to Wang. All we need to know is that Wang will go to hell and back to get his daughter back. Yang Enyou plays Rainy, Wang’s daughter, who’s naturally taken. While Wang also has a particular set of skills, he mostly communicates non-verbally, meaning he doesn’t get a cool monologue like Liam Neeson. Even if Wang could talk, he’d still let his hands do the talking.

The Furious commences with a truck chase so intensely paced and insanely choreographed that it instantly became the most adrenaline-pumping set piece I’ve seen this year thus far. That’s when I realized that the film was merely starting, topping itself with one bonkers showdown after another. While The Furious rarely takes a breather, it does slow down long enough to become a buddy picture. Wang joins forces with Joe Taslim’s Navin, whose journalist wife went missing while investigating a human trafficking ring. Navin also just so happens to be a martial arts expert, as are the various thugs they encounter.

As over-the-top as The Furious is, it’s hard to complain when the stunts are this inventive and the characters are so memorable. Even the side villains manage to be a lot of fun without much dialogue. All they need is a giant sledgehammer or a bow and arrow. Are those weapons really more practical than firearms? No, but they look cool, which is all that matters in a movie like this. Joey Iwanaga is especially menacing as the big bad in a suit. He may not be the most intimidatingly built foe, but one look in this man’s eyes and you can tell he barely has a soul. By the end, he’s soulless.

The film is well-acted, too, although the English dialogue often sticks out like a sore thumb. I’m not sure if there was any dubbing, but the delivery certainly gives that impression. Even if four people did work on the script, the filmmakers know we’re not here for the writing. Tanigaki’s direction is the source of the movie’s beautiful mayhem. Although Tanigaki has worked as an action choreographer for almost three decades, he’s only directed a handful of features. In a way, Tanigaki is a bit like Wang. Just as Wang catches his opponents off guard, some might not have known that Tanigaki had a film like The Furious in him. It feels like we’re watching a master at work, though, unleashing everything he’s learned in a fireball of fury.