The Furious Review

Hong Kong was once at the forefront of action cinema the world over. While the ’80s were a time of maximalist, muscular blockbusters flooding out of the United States, the East Asian city (then a British colony) punched well above its weight. Following the work done by Bruce Lee and the Shaw Brothers to soften the international ground in the ’70s, audiences could expect some of the best action set pieces they’d ever seen. Sure, Hollywood films had guns and explosions (and production value). But you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a stunt so crazy that the director shows it to you three times from three angles. Owing to their speed, playfulness, and innovation, they remain impressive to watch, even out of context. That’s fortunate, as narratives were never their strong suit, which they made up for by leaning into their inherent silliness. And even once they started exporting talent, mainstream American films wouldn’t catch up until John Wick, decades past their heyday.

While Hong Kong never stopped making martial arts films, as the ’90s came to a close, they struggled to overcome their increasing budgetary disadvantage. In the following years, their successes came in other genres, and then slowly faded from the international scene altogether, only generating buzz on occasion, and often relegated to the arthouse or cult crowds. Their film industry became a bit of bar trivia in the West: “Name the movie that Best Picture winner The Departed was based on.”

It feels like The Furious is a bid to reclaim their crown.

The plot is dead simple. Our protagonist is a mute martial artist with a secretive past named Wang Wei (Xie Miao) (although he’s nameless until the very end, for some reason). His daughter Rainy (Yang Enyou) is kidnapped, so after the police show zero interest in going after the perpetrators, he resolves to do it himself. By chance, he teams up with journalist Navin (Joe Taslim), whose journalist wife (JeeJa Yanin) disappeared while investigating the same child trafficking gang. Together, they fight what feels like the entire criminal underworld to bring these scumbags to justice.

The action? Holy shit. From the moment it begins, with Wei sprinting barefoot to overtake the truck that holds his unconscious daughter, dashing through shops and executing flying leaps and finding ways to employ every bit of detritus around him, your heart rate will skyrocket as if you’re running alongside him. A brawl in an underground MMA arena is amongst the most creative uses of space (and stacked humans) you’ll ever see. Once the duo encounters HD (Brian Le), a linebacker type with tremendous skills and resilience, they have a wonderful mini-boss whose contrasting style keeps the combat fresh. By the time the incomparable Yayan Ruhian enters the mix, you’re forced to lift your jaw off the floor as the movie somehow finds another gear, with his innovative longbow work somehow just one of many exhilarating elements of the finale.

Predecessors like The Raid have demonstrated that you can get away with a minimal premise followed by a nonstop barrage of action. Yet for all its successes, if The Furious had done so, some of the minor but notable problems would likely have been harder to get past. For one, our heroes sustain some truly heinous injuries, even as modern action movies go, but there seems to be little rhyme or reason to the few times it hinders them. They’re superhuman…until they’re not. Emphasizing that is the times middling CGI is used to enhance the action, such as rendering some truly nasty falls or using some dangerous or otherwise infeasible weapons, like the pillars of ice. I’ve no doubt all the stunts were done for real, with VFX used to enhance safety on set, which is good! But after seeing someone take a body shot that you felt through the screen, it’s quite deflating to see their body flop like Gumby.

But The Furious insists on hitting its contrived plot beats hard, which is the fundamental problem that continually gets in its way. Breaks in the action are punctuated by overdramatic, stilted dialog in a two-shot. Its themes are broad and clunky, adding no real depth as they force your adrenaline to subside. You feel their awkwardness even more due to terrible ADR that gives Madame Web a run for its money. It makes the choice for the film to be primarily in English despite being a Hong Kong production starring a Chinese character (and actor) that’s set in Thailand even more baffling, since the performers’ discomfort with their non-native tongue seems to be the key issue. It also leads to awkward shot selection, as the person speaking is frequently off-screen or obscured in some way to hide that their voice doesn’t match their lips, which is disorienting.

If you get through the bulk of the film without feeling its runtime, the inclusion of a “final boss” is likely to change that. There comes a point where the film is sending mixed signals, all the plot threads wrapping up while a couple earlier unresolved scenes loom, of a suited guy (Joey Iwanaga) who seems to be in charge. So the intervening scenes, in which the characters think the story is over but we know it can’t be, are interminable. You are rewarded for your wait with some of the best fighting of the film, a huge tribute to the performers and choreographers (although the camerawork can’t always keep up). But it again leans into the narrative that absolutely no one is here for.

Many of its flaws could have been forgiven if it just remembered to have some fun. But the tone is all intensity from start to finish, with only a few limp jokes here and there that never stood a chance of leaving an impact. You can hear it in the (admittedly propulsive) score, see it in the color palette and lighting, and feel it in every dour line reading. There’s little to break up the torrent of violence. You come out of each action scene simply stating matter-of-factly “That was awesome.”, rather than involuntarily smiling from ear to ear. So despite the rapturous response it’s received in its first week of release, it lack of charm condemns it to leave a mark on fight choreography, and little more.