The Furious

Wang Wei (Xie Miao) fights for his daughter in The Furious (Distributed by Lionsgate)

The Furious is an intense, non-stop, violent, kung-fu action thriller, that feels like a throwback to what I grew up on in the 80s and 90s. The story, characters and dialogue are completely irrelevant. They aren’t even secondary. They are more like the tenth most important aspects of this movie, barely given any thought. The action sequences are the first nine.

Thankfully, the fight choreography is fantastic. It is visceral, tight and has an unexpected sense of humor about itself, even as characters are beaten and brutally killed. This is a production where everyone involved clearly understood what the task at hand was. Everything here exists to serve the action, which is exciting, entertaining and very well-crafted. If it gets to be a little much by the end, well, thrill rides can be that way sometimes. But this one will undoubtedly please genre aficionados.

Somewhere in southeast Asia (as the opening titles inform us), a child trafficking ring is taking over the city. A mute searching for his kidnapped daughter and a reporter looking for his missing wife are the only hope to put an end to the terror.

The Furious (108 minutes, without the end credits) hits the ground running with a short, plot-establishing, fight scene, then spends a few minutes introducing our non-speaking protagonist and his daughter, before she is taken by the villains. The rest of the movie only pauses briefly in between elaborate battles. What is interesting is that, though as a whole this is super thin on story, the action sequences each have their own self-contained arcs. That design is pretty cool and makes the relentless violence much more entertaining. You can see the characters finding their way through the fights, whether they are one on one, against a large group or two happening in the same place at the same time.

Wang Wei and his daughter, Rainy (Yang Enyou), are ready for a fight

Director Kenji Tanigaki does not worry about pacing his audience. He throws in brutality, acrobatics, stabbings, shootings, car chases, etc. It isn’t necessarily suspenseful, but it is impressive how he threads all of this together. Seeing quiet Wang Wei spin, leap, roll, dodge, kick and punch his way to his daughter’s whereabouts, using his brain as a part of his physicality, is quite captivating. I have always said that if a movie is prioritizing its action over story and character, the action better be really good. It definitely is in The Furious.

This is a genre movie that is not attempting to appeal to anyone besides fans of that genre. There is no romance, no comedy, no mystery. This is straight-up, old-school, kung-fu action. Someone looking for literally anything else should steer very clear. You will not like this. However, if my description sounds attractive to you, run to the theater for this.

Is it great? No. Yet it does exactly, and only, what it sets out to do as well as I have seen in a long time. Though it probably will struggle a bit in theaters against all the big stuff that starts coming out this week, fans will show up. I expect that word of mouth will carry it to cult favorite status inside the next year. Modern classic status is certainly within reach.

3¾ out of 5

Cast:

Xie Miao as Wang Wei

Joe Taslim as Navin

Yang Enyou as Rainy

Directed by Kenji Tanigaki

Written by Mak Tin-shu, Lei Zhilong, Shum Kwan-sin and Frank Hui