The Furious

A mute handyman's young daughter is kidnapped by a child trafficking ring, so he joins forces with a journalist whose wife disappeared investigating the same group, all leading to a “furious” storm of fisticuffs.

Director Kenji Tanigaki is a Japanese action choreographer, stunt performer, and film director. He has a very long and a very impressive list of credits. He began his career as an action choreographer working with the legendary Donnie Yen. He was the stunt coordinator in what is one of my favorite kung fu epics, Bodyguards and Assassins, as well as in the raucous Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In. He has also worked as the action director on multiple films, including the film, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, which was pretty bad, sure, but it had some good action.

Furious is his third film as a Director.

An American and Hong Kong co-production filmed in Thailand, with a reported budget of about $20 million, Furious begins…

Somewhere in Southeast Asia…

In an unnamed city in Southeast Asia, a journalist named Matia investigates a potential child trafficking ring, all despite her husband Navin asking her to be safe and to come home.

But Martia is dedicated, and also, she's right.

She soon finds the place where the children are being held, but ends up in a big fight with the gang as she is trying to help a child escape. Unfortunately, she is out-numbered, and when the gang’s leader, Paklung, and his bow-wielding lieutenant, Tak, arrive, they not only kill the child, but they capture Matia.

Months later, widowed mute handyman Wang Wei has had his daughter Rainy visiting him for the summer. She normally lives with her grandparents in China, and she wants Wei to return with her to China. But he refuses to leave, as he is still sad about the death of his wife and Rainy's mother. When he finally tells her that he won't be returning to China with her, Rainy storms off in anger.

This is bad news because… y’know… the child traffickers.

A young boy with a limp uses his injury to lure the t00 nice and too trusting Rainy off, and she is snatched by the child traffickers, who are led by a human wrecking machine named Ho. Wei goes looking for Rainy, and he sees her getting snatched, so he gives chase.

He manages to chase down the truck, all while wearing flip-flops, which would be impressive enough, but once he catches the truck, there’s a big fight between Wei, the nigh-unstoppable Ho, and a bunch of less impressive bad guys, all as they fall on and off the back of a speeding truck.

It’s a hell of a fight.

But ultimately, the traffickers escape with Rainy.

Wei goes to the cops, but the cops only end up showing one thing… ACAB. The world over, ACAB. Plus, shockingest shocker of all shockers, the police captain is secretly working with Paklung, the leader of the trafficking gang, so he shuts down the investigation. He then threatens Wei by suggesting that perhaps the police should investigate his past, not to mention his immigration status. So Wei goes home and gets his steel toe boots and a hammer.

Shit's about to get real.

Meanwhile, Navin is in town. He is investigating Matia's disappearance by pretending to be a buyer looking to purchase children for a big time client, so he makes contact with a local trafficker named Song—which is who the man-monster Ho works for, and considers to be his "father"—at his fight club.

Wei arrives there as well.

One of the gang from the truck fight recognises Wei and a huge fight breaks out, which normally wouldn't be unusual, given that this is a fight club, but this fight is happening both inside and outside of the ring, and everyone is involved. Basically, it's Wei, his steel toe boots and his hammer, against a bunch of redshirt bad guys.

The sudden chaos spooks Song, who blames Navin, and orders him killed. As a result, Navin now finds himself fighting at the other end of the crowd from Wei, and when the two meet in the middle, they briefly battle each other, before realizing that they have common enemy.

They start working together.

Wei and Navin go to Song's ice factory, where the children are supposedly being held. There, they beat the unholy crap out of Song and his henchmen, and after a extended concerted effort, finally manage to put down the sledgehammer-wielding murder-machine Ho, but the children are nowhere to be found. With few options left, Wei and Navin torture Song via electrocution, who quickly discloses that the children have been moved to a location called the "Snake Pit."

Also, Matia is dead, so Navin is sad.

After the two leave to go the Snake Pit, Song tries to escape, but finds that Paklung and the bow and arrow wielding Tak are waiting for him, and they execute Song in an effort to tie up loose ends.

Then, despite previously seeming to be dead, Ho sits up.

This human embodiment of death and destruction is somehow still alive, albeit a little groggy, but alive all the same. Worse, Ho finds Song's corpse. It's been nailed to the wall by arrows.

Now the big guy is mad.

Meanwhile, at the Snake Pit, Rainy is a tough little son of a bitch, and refuses to take her kidnapping meekly. She attacks a trafficker, and incites an escape attempt with the children, but most of them are recaptured. But just as the gang is about to recapture Rainy...

Navin and Wei show up, and they are ready to rumble.

And a rumble is what they get... big time.

Wei and Navin are whooping child trafficker ass left and right. Navin live-streams the fight through Matia's social media account, publicizing the rescue attempt, and soon enough both the public and the police arrive at the Snake Pit.

But before the police can join the melee, the corrupt police captain orders them to stand down, and instead, directs them to stop the public from interfering, all while more members of the child trafficking gang arrive to fight Wei and Navin. This is bad news because, within the Snake Pit, depsite seemingly having a never-ending supply of beat-downs to hand out, Navin and Wei are beginning to tire. But to be fair, between the two of them, they have beaten up about a hundred guys, as well as Ho, in the past twenty-four hours.

Nevin tells Wei to run, and to take Rainy, that he'll hold them back. But Rainy is like, fuck that, and persuades Wei to help the other trafficked children escape.

Meanwhile, the police captain is overruled by the one good cop, Sergeant Yadong, and she orders the remaining police to let the public through. The police storm the Snake Pit, while the public gets Rainy and the other children to safety. In the end, good triumphs over evil, everyone is taken to the police station, the traffickers are all arrested, and all the kidnapped children are reunited with their families. Navin and Wei are held there for questioning, as they were the center of the butt-kicking maelstrom that recently swept through town, which was responsible for destroying multiple pieces of property, and presumably filling up the hospital with a bunch of broken thugs and d-bags in silk shirts and track suits. Rainy and the limping boy from earlier in the film are there too.

What a happy ending!

Because you would think that'd be it. You'd think that the film was now over.

Nope.

Paklung has gone mad. Y'see, his trafficking ring was financed by his father-in-law, a criminal kingpin, and his father-in-law's old buddies, basically a ring of powerful old fart criminals with money. But when everything went shitty, what with Navin and Wei smashing up various businesses and hideouts and beating the crap out of all their guys, they were like... this is too expensive, so they tried to turn Paklung into the fall guy and hand him over to the corrupt police captain, but Paklung was not having that, so he kills all the old farts and the police captain too, but... oopsey-doodle... he accidentally kills his pregnant wife as well.

So all bets are now off.

Paklung and Tak (played by the unforgettable Yayan Ruhian, who everyone will obviously remember as Mad Dog in The Raid, but who also played one of the Boss Cannibals in Lone Samurai) raid the police station. They kill almost all of the policemen, and incapacitate Sergeant Yadong.

Wei and Navin escape from their holding cell to protect Rainy and the limping boy, and soon they're in a big final fight wuth Paklung and Tak, and it goes on, people... believe me, it goes on. Then, just when you think it can't get any crazier? Ho, the current Mr. Butt-Kicker 2026, arrives like an angry bull, and you’re like: “well… I guess this shit is about to get even crazier.”

And it does.

They're all flipping over each other, wrestling, punching, and kicking. It's a big scrum of ass-whooping. Before it's all finally done, it devolves into a bicycle fight. But not on bicycles. With bicycles. They’re just throwing bicycles at each other.

Finally, everyone is either dead or exhausted.

The End

One thing's for sure here... these guys can take a beating.

At 113 minutes, The Furious is a child of The Raid and The Raid 2, meaning it's basically a bunch of nonsense and hammy dialogue stringing together a half dozen or so set pieces that give new meaning to the term: Action Extravaganza. This is all due to action choreographer Kensuke Sonomura. It is an astounding mix of martial arts, tumbling, falling, brutal hits, and improvised weaponry in the most intricate fight choreography I've seen in awhile. It's dazzling. Brutal. Bloody. Awesome. The whole thing is an extended series of moments where the film nudges you and goes: "Hey... you wanna see something cool?" Then it shows you something cool.

It does this several times.

Conversely, there are also four people who are credited as screenwriters on The Furious, and for the life of me, the only explanation I can come up with for that is that they hired the first guy, he wrote for about an hour, and then moved away. So they hired the second guy and he wrote for an hour too, but then he had to move away as well. So they hired a third guy, and wouldn't you know it, one hour into working on the script... he had to move away. Faced with no other choice, having already invested nearly three hours in this script, the producers hired a fourth guy. He worked on the script for an hour, and then guess what...

The script was finished.

Yes, it's true, the plot and the dialogue is... it's not bad (it's not good) it's more... perfunctory. Because no matter what else, it's clear the The Furious understands the assignment. We want to see some awesome fights, so that's what they give us. The plot is just a bare nod towards getting us from one fight to the next. If this is something that bothers you, I have to wonder why are you even watching this movie in the first place?

What else is there to say?

If you're looking for some cool fights, then look no further, my friends, because The Furious delivers.