Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious is the kind of action film that demands to be experienced in a theater, where the fight choreography explodes on the screen. After earning strong festival buzz at the Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness section and playing Beyond Fest as a sold-out U.S. premiere, Tanigaki’s latest makes good on its reputation as a bruising, crowd-pleasing showcase for practical martial arts filmmaking.
For a film that largely runs on action and fight choreography, with clunky dialogue doing much of the narrative setup, The Furious is most compelling when it lets its relentless brawls carry the emotion. Every punch, kick, and collision communicates what the script cannot always say. Even when the dialogue stumbles, the physicality makes the characters’ fear, grief, desperation, and rage immediately understandable, proving that in Tanigaki’s hands, action speaks louder than words.
The plot of The Furious is rather thin for a film that runs nearly two hours. The story centers on Wang Wei (Xie Miao), a mute tradesman whose daughter is kidnapped by a ruthless criminal syndicate led by Pak Lung (Joey Iwanaga). He is eventually joined by Navin (Joe Taslim), a tireless journalist who has been tracking Pak’s operation while pursuing a personal mission of vengeance after his wife, who had been investigating a string of missing children, was killed by one of Pak’s men. Together, Wang Wei and Navin become two men driven by different forms of grief, one fighting to save his child and the other fighting to avenge the woman he lost.
Because The Furious relies so heavily on physical storytelling, its characters have to be expressive in the way they move, react, and endure pain. That is especially important for Wang Wei, who is mute and communicates with his daughter, Rainy (Yang Enyou), through sign language. Without spoken dialogue to explain what he is feeling, Xie Miao has to turn Wang’s fear into panic after he sees his daughter being kidnapped. The father chases after the speeding truck in flip flops and runs several blocks in attempts to rescue his daughter. It’s a rage that only a parent could understand. They would do anything in their power to bring back the one they love. Even when a corrupt police force casts Wang aside, Wang does all he can to find the clues that would lead him to his daughter’s whereabouts, even if he can’t speak.
One of the best examples of Tanigaki using action as communication comes in a scene between Xie Miao’s Wang Wei and Joe Taslim’s Navin. Their paths cross when Wang infiltrates a club complete with an octagon ring, while Navin has found himself making deals with a low-level lieutenant. Neither one realizes they are on the same side, so they use their fists to prove it.
What makes the sequence work is that the fight is not built around spectacle alone. It becomes a conversation between two men who do not trust each other yet, but immediately understand each other part in the grand scheme of things. A father looking for his missing daughter, and a husband looking for his wife’s killer, and their missions are intertwined.
The fights are not limited to punches and kicks either. Tanigaki’s choreography makes balletic use of whatever is in reach, whether it is the space around the characters or the weapons they are forced to wield. One standout sequence pits Wang and Navin against Ho (Brian Le), a massive hammer-wielding brute, inside an ice factory.
Simply describing the scene is difficult because so much of its impact comes from the precision of bodies moving through a dangerous physical space. Tanigaki lets that movement breathe through extended takes and clean visual geography, allowing the action to flow without constant cuts interrupting the momentum. The result is a sequence that remains easy to follow even as the violence grows more chaotic. It also speaks to the trust between Xie Miao, Joe Taslim, and Le, whose timing, reactions, and physical commitment make the brutality feel controlled without losing its sense of danger.
That does not mean The Furious is always as strong when the fighting stops. The dialogue often feels blunt and overly functional, with characters explaining their motives more than revealing them naturally. The film’s nearly two-hour runtime also stretches a fairly straightforward rescue-and-revenge story longer than necessary. There are moments when the narrative momentum slows because the script is trying to connect one major action sequence to the next rather than deepening the characters beyond their grief.
When Pak Lung enters the picture, Iwanaga immediately establishes him as a man of power and ambition who has not yet reached the top of the criminal empire he wants to control. He is connected to that world through his marriage to the kingpin’s daughter, but he is clearly not content with merely standing beside power. He wants to possess it. That makes Pak an effective threat in theory, but his role is fairly limited because the film is so focused on Wang and Navin’s intertwined missions. Whenever Pak reappears, the shift does not always feel like a necessary breather from their story. At times, it pulls the film away from its strongest emotional thread.
That imbalance keeps Pak Lung from becoming as memorable as the film’s best action sequences, but Iwanaga still gives the character enough menace to register. He plays Pak as someone who understands power but resents not having more of it. He is also a soon to be father, and wants nothing more than to provide for his future family. Making what happens towards the third act all the more tragic and the exact motivation he needs to be a more compelling character. Again, the problem with that is that we don’t see enough of him and by the time we do it feels like twist is unearned. Still, that tragic twists gives his cruelty an added edge.
Even when the script does not fully develop him, Iwanaga makes Pak feel like a man constantly measuring the room, looking for the next weakness to exploit. The performance helps give shape to a villain who might otherwise feel too thin on the page.
Still, The Furious works best when it stops trying to over-explain itself and lets the action take over. Tanigaki may be working with familiar rescue-and-revenge material, but he gives that material a physical urgency that makes the film feel alive. The story is simple, the dialogue can be clumsy, and some characters feel underwritten, but the film’s best sequences are so clear, punishing, and emotionally charged that those weaknesses become easier to forgive.
As a piece of action cinema, The Furious delivers where it matters most. Its story may be familiar, but its dialogue stumbles, and some of its characters may feel underwritten. Still, Tanigaki understands that great fight choreography is not just about speed or impact. It’s how the action and rhythm convey emotion and advance the story. For all its narrative shortcomings, The Furious is a bruising reminder that action can speak louder than words, especially when seen on the biggest screen possible.
8.5/10
