2026 | rated R | starring Miao Xie, Joe Taslim, Enyou Yang, Brian Lee, Yayan Ruhian | directed by Kenji Tanigaki | 1 hr 53 mins | 4 out of 5 | In Mandarin with Subtitles
A mute father (Miao Xie) watches his daughter kidnapped by child traffickers right in front of him and pairs up with a husband (Joe Taslim) searching for his wife, an investigative journalist who disappeared trying to uncover the operation.
Pierre Morel’s Taken was such a hit that it inspired its own subgenre and naturally Hollywood learned the wrong lesson from it. The wave of post-Taken clones took the film as a model to drop grey beard actors not known for action into the role of an undercover one-man army with a certain set of skills. Veteran stunt coordinator Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious reinvigorates the beating heart behind Taken’s original motive: a father’s relentless drive to save his daughter.
It’s unclear where our mostly-unnamed protagonist gets his set of skills but it doesn’t matter, just that he has them and he’s going to use them to chase down his daughter’s kidnappers to the ends of the Earth and mow down anyone in his way. The other thing The Furious adds to the genre formula is immediacy. Our hero doesn’t have to travel halfway around the world to track down unseen kidnappers, he is immediately and consistently one step behind them, giving the film the desperate propulsion of a live rocket. The film’s first set piece is one of the best fight scenes in years: our hero running barefoot across broken glass and thoroughly ripping apart the kidnapper’s getaway truck. He’s such a formidable force that the villains need to rise above typical action movie antagonists. It’s a barn-burner even though we know he surely has to lose just so the rest of the movie can happen.
But The Furious shares less of its DNA with Taken and more with the brutal Indonesian brawlers given to us by The Raid: Redemption and The Night Comes for Us. The judo and Chinese wushu fight scenes are an eye-popping full body work of beautifully choreographed action movie art while maintaining a sense of realistic desperation and the movie escalates in its tension and insanity. Its characters are very had to kill, particularly Brian Lee as Ho a violent thug with a man-baby quality and a pension for leaping around on all 4’s like an animal. It’s a full body performance by all who slide between legs and leap across multiple enemies in fights that almost defy gravity. Add to that is the Jackie Chan-esque environmental battles where everything from cinder blocks to ladders to bicycles are turned into weapons. People do things in this movie I’ve never seen before. Our old friend Yayan Ruhian from The Raid even shows up as an archer assassin.
It’s all shot with a clear eye and steady camera to show off the talent. It walks right up to, but doesn’t cross, the line where excess becomes numbing. There are 4 or 5 big set pieces here milked for all they are worth. But we’re with it all not just because of the spectacle but because we’re with our hero, his partner, his precocious capable daughter and their fight to be reunited. Reunited from a vast, secret network of child traffickers. Good thing this movie isn’t called Sound of Freedom or critics would be wringing their hands and running to the swooning couch over what a big paranoid conspiracy it was perpetuating. Nonetheless, The Furious is an absolute carnage candy treat for fans of the modern brawler.
Happy Father’s Day