Let Them Fight
Kenji Tanigaki steps behind the camera for a single-minded, pan-Asian free-for-all.
The Furious
Director: Kenji Tanigaki • Writers: Mak Tin-shu, Lei Zhilong, Shum Kwan-sin, Frank Hui
Starring: Xie Miao, Joe Taslim, Yayan Ruhian, Yang Enyou, Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga
Hong Kong • 1hr 53mins
Opens Hong Kong June 12 • III
Grade: B
The entire raison d’être of The Furious | 火遮眼 is literally telegraphed by the film’s assets for media. Not one of the stills provided are of a non-fighting scene. None. No, wait. One is – of star Xie Miao patching up his various wounds after a throwdown that saw him running barefoot through the streets chasing a truck. Which is fine, I guess, because The Furious has absolutely nothing else on its mind. Ostensibly an actioner about a dude whose daughter is snatched up by child sex traffickers teaming up with a journalist looking for his journalist wife who vanished while investigating said same traffickers to find them both, the film is a bog standard revenge thriller trying to earn brownie points by taking the moral high ground in between kicking all the ass. All of it. With sledgehammers.
The script by Frank Hui Hok-man (Trivisa), Mak Tin-shu (Warriors of Future), Shum Kwan-sin (Limbo) and Lei Zhilong (Home Coming) ticks off several of the Southeast Asian Hellhole genre tropes and dials many up to 11; the bad guys aren’t just bad, they’re so utterly reprehensible they deserve every second of the bone-crunching misery and physical brutality they’re subjected to. The unidentified police are corrupt – but really just one, and they bust up the trafficking ring in the end. We know this because of the now de rigueur text screaming across crime drama finales, telling us what a bang up job various governments and their cops do in meting out justice. No big. You’ll probably be halfway out the door by the time that happens, desperate for a drink after director Kenji Tanigaki’s (fight boss for Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In and The Prosecutor) exhausting, balletic onslaught of whoop ass. If you’re surprised by archetypes and flimsy narrative, that’s on you.
One of eight fight-free minutes
There’s a lot of The Raid, a lot of The Night Comes for Us, a lot of early John Woo (with fewer guns) and his high-energy direction and plenty of game vibes in The Furious, and despite its mere suggestion of a story there’s a palpable sense of on-screen glee coming from the cast of martial arts performers, stunt actors and choreographers who are supremely skilled at this kind of thing, and who are finally getting a moment in the spotlight. Sure, sure a few have shown up in Hollywood franchises, but it’s often for one scene and then they’re killed by Keanu Reeves. Don’t get me wrong; I love Keanu Reeves. But no way he’s putting a beat down on Yayan Ruhian.
Anyway the story such as it is begins with Wang Wei (Xie, a veteran finally getting a chance to break out beyond Chinese cinema and making the most of it), a retired, now mute, special agent of some kind (always) now working as a fix-it guy in an anonymous mid-sized SEA city. He’s getting ready to send his daughter Rainy (Yang Enyou) back China for school when she’s kidnapped by kiddie smut peddlers. He goes to the cops, who tell him to take a number, then goes after them himself while looking supremely cool. Along the way he meets Navin (Joe Taslim, The Raid, Mortal Kombat), the journalist who fortunately kicks ass between filing stories, and they figure out they’re looking for the same cadre of scum. They partner to get through the chonky HD (Martial Club Stunt Team co-founder Brian Le) and about 400 other guys to get to HD’s father, the ringleader Mr Song (Sahajak Boonthanakit, Only God Forgives, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters). Mayhem ensues – and spreads across a UFC-style fight cage, a foot chase often over glass, an ice factory (OMG the ice block) and a crumbling tenement to a final 40-miunute (!) five-way throwdown where you can’t see a single boom, dolly track, lighting rig or cable.
But also dialled up to 11 is the action and the acrobatic, mind-bogglingly creative fight choreography, courtesy of Kensuke Sonomura (Manhunt), all somehow flawlessly captured with minimum fussiness by DOP Meteor Cheung Yu-hon (Time Still Turns The Pages). The story may be familiar bullshit but holy fuck do Tanigaki, Sonomura and Cheung deliver where it counts. In The Furious the body is a instrument that these guys (and yeah, guys, Thai martial artist JeeJa Yanin plays the missing reporter with shamefully nothing to do) play like an orchestra. In mixing martial styles Tanigaki keeps us guessing as to what’s going to come next, and never eases up on the tension or the brutality (it earns its Cat III). When Wang wields a iron hammer, HD wields a bigger one. When Mr Song’s superior Pak Lung (Joey Iwanaga) needs to deal with a traitor, he gets his prime hench Tak (the always amazing Ruhian, John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, criminally underused in The Force Awakens, Boy Kills World) in his matching sweat suit ensemble to handle it and promptly take bows and arrows to the next level.
Why Tanigaki (or more likely overseas co-producers and distributors) felt the need to include so much clunky English-language ADR is anyone’s guess, considering the fights are the main attraction. Xie has it easiest, and so miraculously carves an sympathetic character out of Wang and gives The Furious what emotional core it has, but Taslim is especially done dirty with what sounds like about seven different voice over actors, all unnecessary. He can talk however he likes as long as he pops up between two tables with a curved kukri thing. Chef’s kiss.