The Furious

This is a whooping-and-hollering movie. It’s more than satisfying. It’s bloody heaven.

The Furious is a rousing piece of spectacle.

The summer’s must-see for anyone with a taste for ferocious pandemonium.

The Furious is two hours of exactly the martial arts mayhem you were hoping it would be.

Here is the martial arts movie for people who don’t like martial arts movies. Prepare to be wowed.

Kenji Tanigaki's direction during the fights, combined with the intricate choreography, puts Hollywood action movies to shame. As Nicole Kidman continues to say in those AMC bumpers that really should be retired by now, "We come to this place for magic." And magic is what "The Furious" gives us. Violent, bloody, ass-kicking magic.

Sonomura’s fight choreography blends seamlessly with Meteor Cheung’s fluid cinematography; long, circular takes capture the action in full, and Sonomura stages sequences that utilize every star’s unique fighting style while also finding a rhythm and flow among the different practices.

Hands down this film has the best action of any film since John Wick 4, and not just that, it's easily got the single best martial arts action sequence I've ever seen. This is one of those relentless, perfectly crafted action films with some of the most tightly choreographed action you'll ever see. But what makes it work as a movie and not just a great action showcase is how much you care about the main conflict. The film follows a father trying to rescue his kidnapped daughter, and the character work they do between the two of them in the start of the film might be simple but it's so effective. It's a pretty familiar plot, every action star from Liam Neeson to Jason Statham has done a couple movies with this setup, but it works so well here because of how excellent the action is. Words really can't do this movie justice, it's simply a sight that needs to be seen to believed. The ONLY thing holding this back is a couple of the performances can feel a little stiff in the scenes outside of the action, and at least for the version I saw in theaters the film made the INSANE decision to have like a couple specific characters be dubbed over in English, with other characters just speaking in English without a dub, or speaking in Chinese with English subtitles. Everything else about this movie is perfect though, and if I saw a version with no dub I could easily see this going up to a 5/5. Either way, this still has the best action of any film of the last 3 years, and the third act alone is well worth the price of admission.

Rock solid slab of Hong Kong kickassery, filmed in Thailand, with high stakes- the baddies are **** child traffickers. The U.S. dubbing appears to have been done with AI, which is controversial & unfortunate- but the martial arts punches & kicks, knives, arrows, and hammers are pure action cinema real deal. 100% mayhem satisfaction.

The movie was entertaining. My biggest problem with the movie, especially after seeing the John Wick films, is that the main character could've helped himself by killing everyone. So to me, he wasn't really that angry.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

When they set out to make a next-level fight film, the producers assembled a team that includes outstanding actors, choreographers and technicians from various Asian countries (it’s set in “somewhere in Southeast Asia”). What results is a spectacle of gritty, violent encounters that defy human odds (and they keep coming back for more). The plot revolves around a father out to rescue his young daughter from human traffickers, but it’s really all about the martial arts. Various styles are featured with lots of kicks and acrobatics, but it’s often sloppy and noisy without the clever angles and approaches of a Jackie Chan film. As a matter of fact, by the last hour of the two-hour running time, the encounters get downright tedious. I enjoy an insane brawl (my recent review of “They Will Kill You”), but even for me, this proved too over the top and stopped being fun.