The Furious film review: Brutal and entertaining
Actors from The Raid lend this thriller its action credentials
This aptly titled Hong Kong actioner delivers martial arts madness galore as it pits a Chinese mute against a gang of human traffickers. It’s a generically plotted but sometimes insanely energetic thrill-ride from Japanese director Kenji Tanigaki that recalls The Raid in its punchy brawls, breakout potential, and inclusion of Raid alumni Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian.
Miao Xie plays a kung-fu-kicking and initially nameless handyman, whose backstory is a mystery even to his devoted daughter Rainy (Enyou Yang). When Rainy is kidnapped by child traffickers, her dad’s policy of keeping his head down goes out the window and he springs into action. Taslim stars as Navin, whose journalist wife (JeeJa Yanin’s Matia) was investigating the gang before she went missing, while Ruhian plays a formidable, crossbow-sporting adversary.
Tanigaki has worked as a stuntman and action choreographer on the likes of Blade II and it shows in imaginative fight scenes that are coherently and explosively captured. Though it lacks the kinetic camerawork of the aforementioned Raid, it’s similarly impactful and exciting. Men are smashed to smithereens or inexplicably survive the most brutal beatings; at one particularly ouch-inducing point, our hero tackles opponents with a hammer in a cage.
Xie’s wordless performance is genuinely touching, and he benefits from not being saddled with the crude, over-explanatory dialogue. The young Yang is also excellent and the two forge a believable and touching father-daughter bond, adding peril to their plight. Taslim is a welcome addition, and there are a number of suitably nasty villains (including Joey Iwanaga’s psychotic Paklung). However, the show is somewhat stolen by Brian Le as the enormous but dunderheaded henchman Ho, whose habit of firing himself like a cannonball at foes is every bit as fun as it sounds.
The Furious is in cinemas from Friday 26 June.