The Furious (2026)
Directed by: Kenji Tanigaki
Premise: A father (Xie Miao) searches for his young daughter (Yang Enyou) who has been kidnapped. He joins with a journalist (Joe Taslim) to take down a human trafficking ring.
What Works: The Furious combines the martial arts of contemporary action films like The Raid with the family drama of Taken. A father bulldozes his way through an army of underworld goons in a single-minded search for his daughter. From the abduction to the rescue, The Furious is an impressive piece of action filmmaking. The storytelling is shorn down to an arrow point and the picture moves along a clip. The film consists of a series of elaborate fight sequences and the violence is crunchy and vicious. There are a few stand out set pieces, namely a fight on the bed of a moving truck, a brawl inside of a mixed martial arts ring, and the rooftop rescue scene. Movies like this are more resonant when there is a human element. The family angle of The Furious personalizes the conflict and adds to the emotional impact of the action. The trafficked children look to be about ten years old which raises the audience’s righteous outrage. The filmmakers give the children some personality and volition so they are more than just victims to be rescued.
What Doesn’t: The adult characters of The Furious are quite thin. The father has no identity. That’s a deliberate choice. The film offers moments for Xie Miao’s character to talk about his background which he ostentatiously avoids. Nothing comes of that mysterious background. The storytelling is poorly organized. The Furious reaches its organic climax about two-thirds of the way into the film’s nearly two-hour running time. The children are rescued and the film has achieved its emotional peak. Then the movie goes on and on, introducing a power struggle within the criminal underworld and corruption in the police department. This is tagged onto the end of the story. The Furious ends with a protracted three-way fight long after the movie has run out of momentum. The moral outrage and concrete stakes that drove the earlier part of The Furious have been removed, making the final fight dramatically empty. No one is really fighting for anything. The final set piece looks terrible. Unlike the gritty and naturalistic combat seen earlier in the movie, the action of the climactic fight is cartoonishly sped up. It looks awful and dispels the reality of the movie.
Bottom Line: There is a great movie somewhere in The Furious but it’s buried by bad storytelling. The movie has some great craftsmanship and impressive fight choreography but the filmmakers don’t know when to stop.
Episode: #1103 (June 14, 2026)