The Furious

In Tanigaki Kenjo's The Furious, a mute tradesman named Wang Wei sets out on a rampage to find his missing daughter. Recieving no help from the corrupt police, his only ally is a journalist named Navin – whose wife has also mysteriously disappeared. Fueled by a furious vengeance, the unlikely duo ruthlessly fight against the kidnappers in order to find the ones they love.

Now, that synopsis does sound pretty similar to something like Taken, but this movie is clearly inspired by martial arts films like The Raid. It even stars Yayan Ruhian, who previously appeared in bothRaid movies. Unfortunately, while I do give the movie credit for aspiring to be like The Raid, The Furious is nowhere near as good as either of  those films.

To be fair, though, both Raid movies are regarded as two of the best martial arts films of all time. That's a pretty high bar to aspire to. I just think that - despite all of its praise - The Furious is a genuinely bad film.

Sure, the fighting, the choreography, and even the camerawork is impressive, but the story is painfully simple, the pacing is weird, and the runtime is way too long. Worst of all? The dubbing in this film is completely distracting. Which is so weird! Especially since there are multiple languages being spoken in the movie. But the dubbing - which is worse than some early anime dubs - makes all of the performances feel oddly stilted and emotionless.

Mo Tse does his best to lead this film, but it’s hard to buy into all of the other performances when the voice work is so strange. Not to mention that the characterizations are already as paper thin as they can get. Sure, Wei may have an interesting backstory, but his background is never explored in any meaningful way here. Which is a real shame.

I mean, it's not like the movie doesn't have time to get into Wei's past. At nearly two hours long, you would think that he would get some kind of development here. But he never really does. And thats probably why the movie feels so painfully long as well; there's no real substance here.

The lack of substance also affects the structure of the narrative since the "story" is nothing more than a series of loosely connected action sequences that refuse to end. And those action scenes are undeniably cool, but they aren't enough to make up for the film's other weaknesses. So, by the time we get to the awesome three-way fight scene at the end, I'm already completely checked out.

Yes, I do like some of the gruesome and violent action sequences, but I ultimately left the movie feeling underwhelmed.

And that's exactly why - despite being in the minority with this opinion - The Furious would not get a recommendation from me.