Whack smack thud leap crash sock wham thock block hammer? thump whump crack crunch squish squish squish. Exhale. The Furious distills cinema down to sound effects and whirling motion, a pan-Asian approach to Hong Kong action that prioritizes a blistering tempo, unmatched fluidity, and virtuosic movement. Directed by longtime Donnie Yen choreographer Kenji Tanigaki, The Furious boasts plenty of Raid alumni and a similar tone: This is lizard-brain ass-kicking, done about as well as you could hope, with a variety of martial art styles, ridiculous weaponry, and oddball characters for flavor.
This is a film that knows its audience is nostalgic for the kind of throwback pulp where the backstory for a particularly scary henchman is contained entirely in their look. One glance at the bow-wielder played by Yayan Ruhian, an evil Legolas in a Tenenbaum tracksuit, or the bulky all-fours heavy played by Brian Le, and you know what you’re getting. These cartoonish baddies, who wouldn’t be out of place in an arcade cabinet, support an equally silly story. The Furious is a Taken-like, a child-trafficking smackdown where a despicable organization messes with the wrong parent. Unlike other entries in this subgenre, like this year’s tepid Protector, The Furious doesn’t hold back when provoking its audience with cruelty. From the jump, the script is explicit in its justifications: Everyone here deserves what they get, and boy do they get it good.
Those doling out the punishment are Xie Miao, playing a mute father looking to retrieve his kidnapped daughter, and Joe Taslim, playing a journalist looking to retrieve his missing wife, who was on the cusp of revealing this crime ring. The plot linking them together is sparse, merely helping these two punch their way up the chain of criminal command and towards the victims they’re trying to rescue. While Taslim is the better-known of the two to American audiences, Xie Miao should be jettisoned onto the world stage thanks to his charismatic and emotive performance; if he doesn’t turn up soon as a random bad guy in an American blockbuster, it’d be a shame.
But he’s just the most prominent member of a grittily graceful ensemble—a team where the no-look catch of a hammer is pulled off with the same slickness as a complex combo. Tanigaki designs his fights with an acrobatic mindset, where combatants leap and lift each other like a ballet on 2x speed, using their whole bodies rather than simply their fists and feet. It’s ridiculously tactile, whether a giant is using one opponent’s body as a broom to sweep away another or a barefoot chase bursts through a chainlink fence and crunches over broken glass. Merged with the filmmaker’s ability to distinguish characters by the different ways they move (a crowdpleasing brawl in a police station, where a final boss showdown devolves into a chaotic five-man melee, is an impressive feat of coordination), The Furious‘ action is captured and cut beautifully and clearly enough for couch potatoes to appreciate it all.
Of course, it’s hard not to appreciate thrash-scored clashes where the fighters use bicycles as their weapons or ride a motorcycle through a crowded hallway, or an extended conflict centered around control of a sledgehammer. But beyond the ridiculous imagery, individual bits of impressive choreography stick out—for all the bloody kills, a moment where someone jumps up between two closing tables then slides back underneath them, all in one smooth motion, is one that’s been hardest to shake. It’s deeply satisfying, as long as nobody’s talking.
Not to levy unfounded accusations, but the spoken English is so stilted among its multinational cast and the lip-sync so uncanny that it seems possible that The Furious relied on AI to alter its actors’ mouth movements (janky tech that XYZ Films, one of the film’s production companies, has already invested in). If this is true, it’s an egregious unforced error, an aggressively jarring choice that panders to English speakers. If something else is going on, it’s simply a major false note from a production that prioritized action over all else—a film so focused on tangible physicality that the explicit FX work often looks like clip art. Thankfully, there’s so little of either (dialogue or noticeable CG), that it’s easy to shake off when a new brawl breaks out.
And yes, there’s always a new fight cooking whenever one of the corrupt police or upper-crust gangsters are chitchatting, mostly because death is hard-earned in The Furious. That’s a testament to its cartoonish sensibility and its devotion to the artistry of whipping ass—if the bad guy goes down, the fun stops. It’s an addictive mindset, poured into every frame by a longtime stunt professional, where the human body is a perpetual motion machine running on adrenaline and righteous indignation. It’s an elemental success, and the only foe it has to worry about it is itself.
Director: Kenji Tanigaki
Writer: Mak Tin-shu, Lei Zhilong, Shum Kwan-sin, Frank Hui
Starring: Mo Tse, Joe Taslim, Yang Enyou, Jeeja Yanin, Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga, Yayan Ruhian
Release Date: June 12, 2026
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