An explosion of outrageous violence, “The Furious” more than lives up to its title.
, Kenji Tanigaki’s Hong Kong beat-‘em-up is an over-the-top marvel, delivering a jaw-dropping barrage of brutality that’s as expertly choreographed as it is nasty. Exhilarating to the point of breathlessness, this Hong Kong import is the summer’s must-see for anyone with a taste for ferocious pandemonium.
never met an object it couldn’t envision as a lethal weapon. Over the course of its blistering 113 minutes, its characters battle it out with not only guns, knives, machetes, swords, planks, metal rods, hammers, sledgehammers, and bows and arrows, but also microphones, ice picks, broken liquor bottles, pallets, ladders, and bicycles .
Inventive mayhem is the order of the day, and it’s of such an over-the-top variety that it’s hard not to chuckle at some of the creative ways Tanigaki devises for his players to bludgeon, maim, and execute each other.follows in their footsteps by upping the ante through sheer, unadulterated hand-to-hand intricacy. Brawlers don’t simply throw fists in Tanigaki’s spectacular; they leap, slide, flip, twirl, and launch themselves with borderline superhuman agility and speed.
There’s no rest for the wicked in this orgy of outrageous carnage, peaking with a climax that’s so relentless and ingenious, it’s legitimately awe-inspiring—a triumph marked by dexterous performers committed to pulling out all the stops. Tanigaki sets a vicious tone from the outset, with reporter Matia looking for a missing child and, for her trouble, getting a chance to fight multiple baddies, including an archer in a red tracksuit played by’s Yayan Ruhian.
When Matia doesn’t return home, her husband Navin takes up her journalistic cause and searches for both his MIA spouse and the many destitute children she believed had been kidnapped by a covert criminal organization. To do this, he goes undercover and sets up a meeting with a nefarious club-owner boss who wears a big cowboy hat, is surrounded by women, and likes to make it rain with piles of cash.
At the same time, mute handyman Wang Wei wants his daughter Rainy to continue her martial arts training, yet her main concern is convincing her dad to permanently return with her to China. Before they can reconcile these issues, Rainy is snatched by a gang of human traffickers.
Wang’s pursuit of these fiends leads to the film’s first true showstopper, staged in the street, through a warehouse, and on the back of a flatbed garbage truck, where the humble everyman encounters a bald tattooed bruiser who proves to be an incredibly imposing and hilariously persistent foe. With Rainy in the clutches of nefarious agents, mute Wang turns to the cops.
However, despite the genuine concern of a do-gooder officer , the force’s captain is a corrupt scumbag in league with the human traffickers, so that gets him nowhere. Instead, he’s compelled to take matters into his own hands, and fortunately for him, his hands are deadlier than an AR-15. So too are his feet, elbows, and shoulders, and every other body part that might inflict damage on an enemy.
With savage single-mindedness, he stalks his prey in a quest to reunite with his beloved daughter, and though one suspects the protagonist can’t speak because actor Xie isn’t fluent in English, he exudes suitable intensity and has the sorts of astounding moves that would impress Bruce Lee.is written by Mak Tin-shu, Lei Zhilong, Shum Kwan-sin, and Frank Hui, but its plot is just a bunch of clichés bundled together to provide a pretext for chaos. The less these characters say, the better, since everything out of their mouths is simplistic and clunky.
Luckily, Tanigaki recognizes that his latest’s appeal has nothing to do with what’s uttered and everything to do with what’s smashed, slashed, pummeled, and broken. Thus, the means by which Navin and Wang partner up to rescue Rainy and her kindred kidnapped victims is inconsequential; what’s important is that they make for an unstoppable team, operating in tandem to fell hordes of angry henchmen.
The Furious , such as a concussive faceoff between Navin, Wang, and Le’s hairless brute, whose refusal to lay down and die is part and parcel of the proceedings’ R-rated cartoonishness. Exaggerated aggression is complemented by inflated expressions and gesticulations, adding a tongue-in-cheek element to material that’s otherwise grimly bloody.
Tanigaki’s latest is a procession of one-against-many skirmishes, and their escalating craziness is key to the film’s energy, culminating with a clash between Xie and Taslim’s heroes, Ruhian’s assassin, and the posh villain who seizes control of the malevolent trafficking enterprise. To say that this climax is astonishing is to undersell it; rarely has ultra-violence been orchestrated with this insane degree of difficulty.
There are several closing moments that elicit actual gasps of delight, and though some of that is due to Tanigaki’s fondness for physical punishment and pain—no one comes out of this melee unscathed—it’s mostly the byproduct of outstanding choreography that concocts novel approaches to martial-arts madness. The originality on display is invigorating and easily makes up for the fact that the narrative is perfunctory claptrap and the leads’ dramatic turns are merely functional.
’s stilted storytelling holds it back from being a true modern classic, but only barely, considering that it leaves one feeling battered in the best way possible. A popcorn extravaganza of extreme hostility, cleverness, and skill, it’s a veritable gift from the genre gods, and certainly a step above the big-budget domestic blockbusters that are vying for multiplex supremacy but can’t hope to match its sadistic splendor.
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