Like all great hard-core action movies, The Furious cuts to the carnage. After the necessary back story – the thick bond between mute Chinese handyman Wang and his only daughter Rainy – director Kenji Tanigaki unleashes the first of many inventive set pieces, with no intention of stopping.
“No time,” Wang’s handwritten plea to the ineffectual police to give chase to the kidnappers, characterises the movie too. Wang (Xie Miao) almost manages to stop a garbage truck commandeered by the huge and yet agile Ho (Brian Le) from taking off with Rainy (Yang Enyou). Every object within reach comes handy in the battle for supremacy – a motif brilliantly used through the 115-minute movie.
Wang later meets Navin (Joe Taslim), who’s looking for his missing journalist wife Matia (Jeena Yanin). Matia has previously proved both her investigative skills and her marital arts skills while trying to bust a child trafficking ring. Wang and Navin team up against the traffickers, which includes the body-slamming Ho, the deadly archer Tak (Yayan Ruhian) and the psychotic ring leader Paklung (Joey Iwanaga).
The setting in an unnamed Southeast Asian city yields mediocre dubbed English dialogue but also a dazzling array of martial arts styles. The fights, many of them long takes, have the messiness of a schoolyard brawl and the elegance of superlative choreography that allows each of the key characters to show off their specific skillsets.
Bodies entangle and disentangle like jittery amoeba under a microscope. There’s a visceral quality to the combat, the palpable feeling of well-trained bodies, injury-proof throwing themselves in all directions to come up trumps.
Tanigaki (who’s also a globally reputed action choreographer), cinematographer Meteor Cheung and editor Chris Tonick keep up the pressure, steadily and seamlessly moving from violence to outright brutality. The climax, a ferocious five-way fight to the finish, tops a formidable list of heart-stopping moments that are often too close to call.
Even the children join in, giving The Furious just about enough of an emotional undertow that never gets in the way of the jaw-dropping action.
