{"id":357367,"date":"2026-06-12T05:02:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T05:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/357367\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T05:02:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T05:02:17","slug":"the-furious-review-it-could-change-how-hollywood-throws-a-punch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/357367\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Furious’ review: It could change how Hollywood throws a punch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The action scenes in Kenji Tanigaki\u2019s<\/a> \u201cThe Furious\u201d are like nothing else in the multiplex. Imagine combat choreographed by ants, swarms of elbows and legs scrabbling to emerge victorious. Churning piles of knees that hook and trip. A man swinging a ball-peen hammer at an incoming horde of baddies, knocking each unconscious as he scales their heaped bodies like a cheerleading pyramid.<\/p>\n

Meet the next Asian film fighting style that will clobber Hollywood slap-happy just as Hong Kong wire-fu spawned \u201cThe Matrix\u201d<\/a> and Indonesia\u2019s \u201cThe Raid\u201d<\/a> begot \u201cJohn Wick.\u201d<\/a> In five years, Keanu Reaves will be brawling like this. (Although after decades of popularizing advancements in fisticuffs, he\u2019s earned the right to relax.)<\/p>\n

The brawls are the sole reason to watch \u201cThe Furious.\u201d Story-wise, it\u2019s rote: A father (Xie Miao) must rescue his kidnapped little girl (Yang Enyou). Smack the four credited screenwriters with a rubber mallet if you\u2019ve heard that one before. The only narrative novelty is how audaciously cruel the movie is to kids. Tykes get slapped around, shot with arrows and dangled in traffic \u2014 tortures that are played seriously, but the shock of them allows you to guffaw.<\/p>\n

To be fair, abducted 9-year-old Rainy is pretty cute, with solemn eyebrows and a conscience that continually puts her in peril. Thrust into a dungeon of other tots, she even punches a hobbled boy who deserves it.<\/p>\n

Our setting is \u201csomewhere in Southeast Asia,\u201d according to the intro text. I suppose no country wants blame for a child trafficker (Joey Iwanaga) who commands his minions to snatch fresh minors as casually as ordering takeout. Or perhaps the vagueness stems from casting a mish-mash of Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Chinese and American actors. There\u2019s no need to shake hands on a shared language when the ensemble talks with their fists. When forced to speak, a couple of the dubbed voices come off whiny.<\/p>\n

To further slash the dialogue, the main protagonist is mute. I\u2019ll accept that script choice. A nameless handyman with a mysterious past that receives, and requires, no explanation, Miao\u2019s face is plenty expressive. So is his temper, which accelerates from zero to 60 in an instant. When Rainy is thrown in a pickup truck \u2014 literally lobbed into the back like a balled sweat sock \u2014 her dad immediately pursues in flip-flops that make a visceral thwack each time his vulnerable foot slams full-speed into the pavement.<\/p>\n

The fretful electronic score is by Flying Lotus<\/a>, Elliot Leung and Olivia Xiaolin. But really, what I\u2019ll remember is the desperate sound of those sandals and later, the crack of a busted neck.<\/p>\n

The cops of wherever this is are ineffectual. \u201cYou\u2019re bleeding all over my counter,\u201d one gripes when Miao races to a police station to report the crime. Instead, the dad allies with an undercover reporter (Joe Taslim<\/a> of \u201cThe Raid\u201d and the recent \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d <\/a>reboot) who is trying to find his wife (JeeJa Yanin), a fellow journalist also chasing the head of this crime syndicate. (There turn out to be a few.) A black belt in taekwondo, the impressive Yanin sets the bar high in the opening scene, battling two goons who hoist her aloft in the splits.<\/p>\n

One of the attackers is the 5-foot-2 dynamo Yayan Ruhian<\/a> who was so charismatic as the wicked Mad Dog in \u201cThe Raid\u201d that he not only cameoed as a different character in the sequel<\/a>, he even bludgeoned his way to a bit part in the \u201cStar Wars\u201d universe. Here, Ruhian diversifies his skill set, killing people at a distance with a bow and arrow, which feels like cheating. Eventually (and thankfully) he\u2019ll put those weapons down.<\/p>\n

The new name to learn is Kensuke Sonomura, a veteran stunt director making his biggest Western splash to date. Sonomura\u2019s style is volumetric; he dares himself to discover unexpected axes of movement. In his hands, that old chop-socky clich\u00e9 where a circle of ninjas challenges the hero one at a time becomes a sphere of ninjas simultaneously engulfing the hero from above and below. A hallway fight doesn\u2019t proceed linearly. Instead, attackers fill the space up to the ceiling, forming what I can only describe as a Dagwood knuckle sandwich. Nevertheless, Sonomura abides by gravity. His fighters don\u2019t hover \u2014 they climb on each other\u2019s backs.<\/p>\n

Fans of Sonomura can identify his technique at a glance. Barely contained by screen, it resembles a microscope slide teeming with bacteria. Cinematographer Meteor Cheung doesn\u2019t need to do much more than park his camera on a tripod and pan it side to side, occasionally looking down in alarm like a librarian peering over her glasses. But his color palette is so grimy that it becomes a hindrance. Does a dark basement have to be that dark? (For another angle on Sonomura\u2019s genius, seek out the \u201cBaby Assassins\u201d trilogy, even more watchable for having good scripts.)<\/p>\n

Here, perpetual motion tips over into physical comedy. The stand-out villain of \u201cThe Furious,\u201d a bald bruiser played by Orange County-born Brian Le<\/a>, moves like an 8-bit video game brute, wobbling his ankles before he falls down and goes boom. (You might remember Le as the pantless security guard in \u201cEverything Everywhere All at Once.\u201d<\/a>) As massive as Le is, he jumps horizontally, hurling his muscles straight through the air. Another time, he mops the floor with an opponent \u2014 no, really \u2014 using the body to clear a pathway through the bloodshed.<\/p>\n

Pairing Tanigaki with Sonomura is a treat. The director is a longtime action coordinator mentored by Donnie Yen; likewise, Sonomura has started to helm his own fastidiously staged chaos. This showcase of their combined talents \u2014 one epic, the other intricate \u2014 comes as both are transitioning to the boss in charge. That Lionsgate is giving what might be their one and only team-up a wide release testifies to the studio\u2019s confidence that it will be one of the defining stunt films of the decade. They\u2019re right to think so: \u201cThe Furious\u201d will definitely leave a mark.<\/p>\n

‘The Furious’<\/p>\n

In Mandarin, Tagalog and English, with subtitles<\/p>\n

Rated: R, for strong bloody violence and language<\/p>\n

Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes<\/p>\n

Playing: Opening Friday in wide release<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The action scenes in Kenji Tanigaki\u2019s \u201cThe Furious\u201d are like nothing else in the multiplex. Imagine combat choreographed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[145486,145485,4667,9229,145480,24710,44853,1743,145484,145479,48,52,51,47,50,49,145483,145482,27268,145481,315],"class_list":["post-357367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-action-cinema","tag-arrow","tag-back","tag-dad","tag-furious","tag-hand","tag-hero","tag-hollywood","tag-kenji-tanigaki","tag-kensuke-sonomura","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-miao","tag-ninjas-challenge","tag-style","tag-the-raid","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}