The Furious Review: Joe Taslim & Xie Miao Turn A Human-Trafficking Thriller Into An Action Masterclass

The Furious (M18)

Starring Xie Miao, Joe Taslim, Yang Enyou, Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga, Yayan Ruhian, Jija Yanin

Directed by Kenji Tanigaki

Everybody’s fighting everybody in this stuntman jamboree as though the emergency room’s right next door.

A mute Chinese handyman, Wang Wei (Xie Miao who played Jet Li's kickbutt small son way back in 1995's My Father is a Hero), sees his young daughter, Rainy (Yang Enyou), abducted in broad daylight by a human-trafficking gang in “somewhere in Southeast Asia”. Obviously Thailand.

He chases relentlessly like the Terminator in coolie slippers down the streets but fails to rescue her after a pulsating fight with thugs onboard a speeding garbage truck that would bankrupt an entire insurance company.

On the way to save her, he teams up with Navin (judoka Joe Taslim from Indonesia’s still-talked-about 2011's The Raid). The latter is looking for his reporter-wife, Matia (Jija Yanin, herself the kickass babe from 2008 Thai actioner, Chocolate). In an opening cameo, she goes missing after investigating kids snatched from poor neighbourhoods.

Our Dynamic Duo provokes-punches-plasters-pulverises an entire population of baddies, led by a rich, sneering psycho, Paklung (Alice in Borderland's Joey Iwanaga). His unstoppable even-more-psychotic henchman, Tak (Yayan Ruhian, the legendary Mad Dog from The Raid), keeps shooting arrows really up close as if he's running an archery-themed morgue.

Man, this guy is so cold attacking a police station even with someone’s severed arm still grabbing his leg. Insane.

People whack each other in all kinds of ways, styles, methods and madness. Including a berserk baldie (Brian Le from Everything Everywhere All at Once) who smashes literally everyone as the poster boy for head trauma. Wang breaks a metal mallet right on his chrome dome.

To complete this crazy Fight Club of Asia, this whole squabble is directed by Kenji Tanigaki, Hong Kong-based Japanese action director of Rurouni Kenshin and Sakra. Making you wonder — where the hell are Singapore's siao lang (mad folks) in this merry open house?

And oh, virtually everybody, even the local cops, speak American like it’s a B-grade knock-off from the 1970s. A clean female cop (Manatsanun Phanlerdwongsakul) is modern-day relevant. Her ludicrously corrupt boss looks like an escapee from an outdated hick town.

Which suits no-speaka-English PRC Xie Miao's mute dude just fine. Although he writes urgent notes in quite perfect ang moh. Amazing.

FYI. A similarly-named Malaysian boxing flick, The Furious: Pertaruhan Maruah, is out in our cinemas too. So this is truly a season to be furious.

Okay, some things.

Lots of people rave over this fight flick as the best action movie of the year, decade, recent memory, etc. They’re right. It’s an eyeful, earful, thousand-bags-full of whacking, kicking, chopping, hammering as Wang clobbers huge groups with a little hammer like an ornament atop a Christmas tree.

They just omit to mention that it’s also the best action-choreographed movie of the year too. Because from start to finish, what you see are stunt after stunt, practised move after move, rehearsed kick after kick to such a mind-numbing level you forget that serious folks are doing seriously dangerous ballet here.

Don’t get me wrong. The Furious is spectacular, risky to film and nervous to behold as it’s staged by peak action practitioners. It's visceral, it's violent. But it ain’t The Raid that was defined by its vertical floor-by-floor pencak silat freshness. This one here has a horizontal, more standard brawl-by-brawl set-up looking like a stuntmen’s convention turned into a free-for-all.

Including a nutty five-man showdown that’s comically absurd but thrillingly captivating. Because this show has a whole bunch of fight-movie exponents straight out of the United Nations not seen since Bruce Lee scaled the pagoda in Game of Death.

You get Thais, Indonesians, Japanese, Vietnamese and even a spunky little displaced mainland girl, Yang, who’s feisty-good in her own Mandarin-language film standing up to everybody bigger than her.

Plus, of course, the main star, Xie Miao, who's so diminutive he seems to need to pummel five times just to get one solid blow across.

Kudos to him, though, for being the only fella who actually displays legit kung fu cred while everyone else is basically brawling.

“Who are you?” he's asked as the mystery man in this eastern Western.

Let him say this for all present here — “Super-stunt-man”. (3.5/5 stars) now in cinemas

Photo: Norachai Kajchapanont/Lionsgate

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