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By Chris Sawin
| Published
The Furious doesn’t quite live up to expectations, and that’s probably weird to hear from someone who was highly anticipating the film and enjoys martial arts films in general. Looking at the likes of who made the film, The Furious is directed by Kenji Tanigaka, the action choreographer of Twilight of the Warriors: Walled Inand the stunt coordinator or action director on at least a dozen of Donnie Yen’s films from Blade II to Hell. The fight choreography in The Furious is credited to Kensuke Sonomura, director of Ghost Killer and action director of all of the Baby Assassins films.
A Basic Setup With Elevated Action
The Furious capitalizes on the action and martial-arts elements of a film of this nature, but everything else is lacking. The story is that some bad guys are human trafficking children, and that’s about as deep as it goes. A journalist disappears while investigating a story, but her husband, Navin (Joe Taslim), continues the investigation, going undercover to locate her.
Meanwhile, a young girl named Rainy (Yang Enyou) is abducted as part of the human trafficking ring. Her father, a mute handyman named Wang Wei (Xie Miao), attempts to track her down and save her himself when the police turn him away for lack of evidence.
Outside of Navin searching for his wife and Wang Wei looking for his daughter, there’s no character development in The Furious. The human trafficking syndicate is run by Paklung (Joey Iwanaga), who is marrying into a gangster family and whose wife is pregnant. His motivation seems to be that because he’s expecting a child and because he needs to maintain his life of luxury, he needs to turn to doing despicable things to other children to accomplish those goals.
The villains in the film have such strange motivations. What makes the story frustrating at times is that the police chief is corrupt for its own sake. The cops are difficult to work with because he’s in charge. The human trafficking syndicate sells children because they can make money. It’s true that you don’t go into a movie like this for memorable acting or a well-written story, but it should also be considered a hindrance when lackluster film elements are this noteworthy.
A Frenetic, And Phonetic Experience
The film does pack a lot of surprises into its action, though. The Furious seems not to be a huge fan of children, as they’re killed and terrorized throughout the film. It’s borderline ridiculous at times, too, as people never seem to die from lethal injuries. Wang Wei gets hit by a car while running and gets back up like it’s nothing. There’s a climactic bicycle duel in the rain, people bite off fingers unexpectedly, and somebody does a handstand, holds a knife with their feet, and then stabs somebody else with it.
With foreign films like this, it’s baffling why the filmmakers choose to make the films (mostly) in English. When everyone involved is from Hong Kong or Indonesia and English is clearly their second language, it’s evident in their performances, regardless of how much effort they put into it.
Dialogue takes the biggest hit in The Furious because it is slow and broken up in a way that sounds like it’s being performed phonetically. It’s like it’s done in an effort to appeal to a wider audience, since reading subtitles isn’t for everyone, but the majority of the fanbase of foreign and martial arts films are used to it by now. Unless an actor is fully fluent in the other languages they speak, their performance will be affected. The easiest fix is to allow them to speak in their native language so they can feel more confident, natural, and sound more genuine.
Despite the film featuring wushu, judo, and taekwondo as fighting styles, the action in The Furious is reminiscent of Muay Thai mixed with a lot of grappling; think Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior meets Donnie Yen’s Flash Point. And, for the most part, it’s awesome. But personally speaking, it grew a bit redundant. You can only slide on the ground, hit someone with your back, elbow, or knee, suplex, or use a hammer as a weapon so many times before it feels stagnant.
Hammering Its Way To The Top
To be fair, there are some incredible sequences in The Furiousas well. Wang Wei’s first real use of the hammer is so awesome. He’s trapped in an MMA cage, so he uses a hammer to smack and pull people down to build this unconscious mountain of bodies to jump out of the cage. Xie Miao is a beast throughout the film. He spends the first third of the film either in flip-flops or barefoot running in the streets as he chases the men who take his daughter. The bloody feet T-1000 runs combined with the constant pitter-pattering of his feet smacking against the ground will be playing on repeat in your head for a long, long time.
Before the mountain of dudes sequence in the cage, the club sequence is really awesome as Wang Wei shows up wearing steel-toe boots with a picture of his daughter in his mouth and just annihilates anyone that stands in his way. There’s also a sequence where Wang Wei is riding a motorcycle through a tight hallway as Rainy rides behind him and pummels passersby with a pipe. There’s no doubt that adrenaline-fueled innovation pulses through every frame of The Furiousbut it loses its steam the longer the fights last.
Tak (Yayan Ruhian) is Paklung’s right-hand man and is a weapons expert. He uses a bow and arrow for the majority of the film and is just as fast and as wicked as you’d expect him to be. The finale is also ridiculously amazing as it involves five different people using five different fighting styles, and it eats up the last 15-20 minutes of the film so effortlessly.
The Furious is one of the best action films of the year, but not the best of all time. It’s crazy innovative, but its unique nature fades as the film progresses. Its ingenuity is swapped for a fast pace that doesn’t let up, so the action is quick but repetitive. It’s a film that deserves its praise with a slight caveat.
The Furious is pummeling its way through theaters now.
