On a gut level, there is something very satisfying in seeing an elaborately choreographed action sequence executed with style and creativity. And The Furious has several of these. Watching the movie, the lineage of Hong Kong action blockbusters is apparent, as director Kenji Tanigaki combines the often outrageous techniques of those films with a more grounded and gruesome violence -fighters still appear at times indestructible, but they show more visceral blood and bruising until they do arbitrarily succumb. And you are in no hurry for that as an audience given the consistently entertaining new ways these figures get back up after a walloping to continue the beef.
The Furious doesn’t let up on this easily, and perhaps thankfully so, as outside of the action there is very little distinct or compelling to the film. It is a movie that has a charmingly pan-Asian character to it. It is produced by Hong Kong, but directed by a Japanese filmmaker and shot entirely in Thailand. Its cast is composed of Chinese, Indonesian, Thai, and Japanese actors (and one Vietnamese-American). And yet a lot of the movie is in English, perhaps as a neutral third language, but nonetheless is a baffling choice in practice. And it is one of the movie’s blessings therefore that the story’s protagonist is a mute.
His name is Wang Wei, played by Xie Miao, a Chinese man working odd jobs in southeast Asia when his young daughter Rainy (Yang Enyou) shows up in the hopes of taking him home. But before long while out alone she is lured into a trap and kidnapped by a gang of child traffickers, and just as soon Wei, a kung-fu virtuoso, is on their trail, eventually crossing paths and teaming up with a similarly skilled investigative journalist Navin (Joe Taslim) whose wife was murdered by this same gang.
The action in this movie starts in quick and barely relents -there’s little that Wei needs to do to find this gang because the investigation doesn’t matter. What matters is his fighting his way through a horde of villains to get his daughter back and you could argue Navin is mostly included to be a sounding board off whom Wei can react and the audience can get some perspective. Navin is of course given his own motivations though, and luckily his actions in pursuit of them line up with Weis -as unbefitting for a journalist as they might be. This is to the movie’s benefit though, it’s script and storytelling are pretty lacklustre, everything is about getting to the next big, boisterous fight.
As is the case of many a classic martial arts movie, hiding deficiencies in character and narrative construction with cool action beats, and The Furious puts in real effort at that kind of an impression as well. A lot of it pays off. Wei can take on several adversaries himself, and there are a few beats to that effect showcasing Xie's masterful techniques and ruthless efficiency, but the best fight sequences are the ones in which he and Taslim team up. Though their buddy dynamic is shallow they are still a fun pair of contrasts who showcase terrific physical chemistry together through three very wild and dynamic set-pieces. Their face off in a large freezer (containing bodies frozen in ice) against a brute juggernaut played by stuntman Brian Le -who you might remember as the butt-plug fighter in Everything Everywhere All at Once- is a ride of inventive, propulsive hardcore action, vividly shot and evenly paced. It is on the lower end of the violence spectrum for this film, which by the last act gets quite bloody. Still, the weight of the wounds translates, even as this particular adversary, a highlight side character, takes many a blow that would kill the average person. To a lesser degree we see this throughout the movie which at times appears to replicate old notions of the durability that comes with cartoon violence, just with blood added for texture. And that proves to not be a bad concoction. This violence does go full tilt into sadistic severity eventually, notably in a chaotic and darkly absurd sequence involving the chief bad guy played by Joey Iwanaga, but it manages that transition well enough through the continued sophistication of the choreography and each of the actors’ abilities to live up to it.
Yet you still cannot get away from the movie’s inherent shallowness. It avoids specificity in several respects (Bangkok is never directly identified as the location, though it is implied at times) -and thus has very little to say about these gangsters and their crimes. Even the gang’s actual leader, whom Iwanaga’s Paklung is the son-in-law of, is disgusted by child trafficking as an arm of their criminal enterprises -but there is no discussion of the trafficking and why it is being done beyond Paklung simply just being evil. There is also an orphaned boy whom Rainy befriends and serves as a second character prioritized to rescue, whose circumstance is referenced in neutral terms unexamined by the film or other characters.
There is the matter too of the movie's choice in language, which comes off pretty awkward in a lot of scenes. It is not just the fact that English is framed quite normally in this South Asian setting amongst both high-class and underground characters, but the fact that all of it is dubbed over, which Tanigaki attempts to hide in pretty awkward ways. It is common for dialogue scenes to frequently cut away from a character to the reverse shot while speaking. And the tactic is employed evenly across the board, even for the actors who are or pass for fluent, like Taslim, Le, and Iwanaga. They manage alright, but other actors who may only have learned their lines phonetically visibly struggle -especially the poor guy playing a police ensign, who appears to be dubbed over with an American actor.
Xie is thankfully spared this treatment by his character's disability -able to concentrate purely on his relentless determination. The movie is an excellent showcase for him on his martial arts bona fides, but he is also a compelling presence independent of that. His character is thinly defined but it suits the mystery that Xie projects. Yet there is an emotional core to the performance, and a very grounded, human vulnerability -despite all that he is able to walk away from. Xie began his career as a child actor, where he appeared in a few films as a protege of Jet Li -and he is certainly capable of becoming a star of Li's proportions, entering this movie as a persona fully formed.
And it is fittingly furious. If nothing else, the movie lives up to its title -the fury-motivated fighting is nonstop -to the point that once the action ends the movie is very quick to wrap up. It is full of creativity and drive in this respect as all manner of styles and weapons are used -the last sequence features heavily Yayan Ruhian of the Raid films in a tracksuit shooting people with arrows. Its script is quite dull and unambitious, the language choice is often distracting, and the climax is really an extended anticlimax after everything appeared resolved. But cool, unconventional fighting by distinct and charismatic (if undeveloped) figures in a martial arts movie counts for a lot. Tanigaki delivered on this most critical point.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jordanbosch.bsky.social
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Comments
Post a Comment