The Furious
Director: Kenji Tanigaki
Writer: Tin Shu Mak, Zhilong Lei, Kwan-Sin Shum, Frank Hui
Cast: Miao Xie, Joe Taslim, Enyou Yang, Brian Le, Yayan Ruhian, JeeJa Yanin, Joey Iwanaga, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Manatsanun Phanlerdwongsakul
Seen on: 26.6.2026

Content Note: ableism, child abuse, torture

Plot:
The Dad (Miao Xie) is a handyman who is just trying to get through his life. His daughter Rainy (Enyou Yang) is visiting him, and their time together is spent mostly harmonious though she resents him for making her train martial arts so much. When Rainy is kidnapped, her Dad shows that he himself is no stranger to fighting, and he will fight tooth and nail to get his daughter back. Along the way, he finds reluctant support in Navin (Joe Taslim) who is looking for his journalist wife Matia (JeeJa Yanin) who was investigating a series of kidnappings and has since disappeared herself.

The Furious comes with a lot of buzz, and I am here to say that that buzz is very well deserved. If you have any appreciation for fight scenes and martial arts, you should absolutely watch this film.

I think that The Furious is the best martial arts movie I have seen since The Raid, although I don’t think that The Raid was quite as brutal as The Furious. I found myself literally flinching more than once, and one time I actualy audibly gasped at the injuries doled out, and I usually don’t gasp, ever.

But they are not just pretty relentless and very tough, they are also very well choreographed and extremely creative. The many tools that get employed and (ab)used here is quite something, and all scenes are very distinct from each other in set-up and style. I also loved that Rainy gets her fair share of fighting, in the literal sense: as a child, she can’t fight like the adults, but she has enough skill to do some damage regardless.

The plot probably won’t surprise all that much, though the film does give us a bit of a twist with the final villain that I didn’t expect. In any case, as a vehicle for as many fight scenes as possible, it works nicely. What didn’t work as well for me was the character of Ho (Brian Le) – a disabled, basically non-verbal fighter who appears to feel no pain whatsoever. And while I did find his backstory interesting and his position left him as a free agent with no clear alliances which made some of the fights even more interesting, I have an issue with portraying the disabled as unable to feel pain and basically indestructible (especially when they are tall and/or fat). It’s an ableist trope that the film leans on very heavily here.

But other than that, I really enjoyed The Furious. Miao Xie and Joe Taslim were great leads who complimented each other lightly. But above all, the fights really were that good.

Summarizing: hell yeah.