Kenji Tanigaki has spent his 30-year career primarily as a stunt coordinator for Japanese martial arts films. That explains why much of The Furious is essentially a glorified action sequence. There’s no doubt these action scenes are some of the most beautifully choreographed fights ever brought to film, but it’s a shame the rest of the film doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain.
When human traffickers kidnap Rainy (Enyou Yang), the headstrong daughter of Wang Wei (Miao Xie), Wei goes to extreme lengths to find her. On his journey to save Rainy, Wei meets Navin (Joe Taslim), the husband of a missing journalist, hoping to uncover the truth his wife was so close to revealing. The two face off against various human traffickers and their henchmen as they work to save Rainy, other children and expose the truth to their city.
If you just thought, “wait, haven’t I seen this movie before?” The answer, unfortunately, is yes, you most definitely have. The trope of a daughter being trafficked and a father (or father figure) fighting off gangs of criminals to save her is extremely overused and, in ways, harmful to the reality of human trafficking—but I’ll refocus before this becomes more about the problem of human trafficking than the film in question. Still, sometimes it’s therapeutic to laugh at human traffickers as they get whack-a-mole’d. The worst part about this overused trope is that Rainy’s kidnapping barely matters to the plot, which is far more interested in how many times it can make its audience cringe as Wei and Navin claw their way through a South Asian city.
It’s hard to completely dislike The Furious, though, when the action scenes and fight choreography are as brilliant as they are. Tanigaki clearly knows how to pull his audience into a fight, forcing them to feel every punch, kick, and eye-gauge along the way. The effortless choreography, paired with Meteor Cheung’s cinematography that feels more like another character than just a camera, creates action sequences that feel exciting and immersive—even when the fight itself drags on and fails to propel the story forward.
If you’re a fan of intense action that never (ever) ends, The Furious is most definitely a film worth checking out. But if you value solid storytelling (and keeping your lunch), this may be a film to skip.
