The Furious review (2026)

Believe all the hype for The Furious. It’s legitimately one of the best action movies ever made and that still might be underselling the experience.

You can safely put The Furious up against Enter the Dragon, any John Wick chapter, both of the two Raid films, Kill Bill vol. 1, both Extraction films and Ip Man. It holds up with no problem and just might be the definitive film in the more specific intense, hyper bloody violent sub-genre.

Right from the opening act, The Furious promises a bloody and hard-hitting martial arts action spectacle that defies comparison. Journalist Matia (Jeeja Yanin) has uncovered the location of a child trafficking ring but gets caught before freeing the kidnapped children.

Director Kenji Tanigaki (Enter the Fat Dragon) quickly clues the audience in that The Furious is not going to be some by-the-numbers action film as Matia gives the kidnappers a more formidable fight than they expected. Just this opening fight scenes shows this is going to be a top tier modern day martial arts experience.

Trade worker Wang Wei (Xie Miao) is spending a few more days with his young daughter, Rainy (Yang Enyou), before she departs to go back to school. Wang has struggled to process the loss of his wife and Rainy’s mother and sent her to live with her grandmother in the interim. Rainy is old enough to start pushing back on Wang’s insistence that she keeps up with her martial arts.  

Screenwriters Mak Tin-shu, Lei Zhilong, Shum Kwan-sin and Frank Hu foreshadow that if Rainy had only listened to her father, she might have avoided getting abducted by the traffickers. Wang proves more troublesome for Rainy’s kidnappers as they struggle to get away.

Again, Tanigaki delivers a breathtaking fight scene with brilliant choreography that lets viewers clearly see everything playing out. The Furious isn’t hyper-edited to make the combatants appear faster or more competent in pulling off all the intricate moves.

Realizing the local police is of no use, Wang starts his own investigation in hopes of finding Rainy. His path crosses with Navin (Joe Taslim, Mortal Kombat II), a journalist who’d been working on an undercover investigation to take down the traffickers and also find his wife, Matia. This initial meeting occurs after an incredibly brutal and smooth series of battles playing out on two levels.

Tanigaki shows a mastery of layered fight scenes in The Furious deftly switching back and forth between battles without making it feel disorienting. Anything can and will be used as a weapon from ball peen hammers, bottles, icepicks, swords, sledgehammers, cinderblocks, machetes, axes and even bicycles. In the context of the film, it all works.

While Wang only uses sign language and hastily scribbled notes to communicate, Miao delivers an amazing performance. From a coldly emotion-less fighter to a distraught and desperate father, Miao conveys so many emotions without needing a line of dialogue. This puts more of the onus on keeping the story moving along on Taslim, who has no problem meeting that challenge.

The script is fairly straightforward, though it does feel like the screenwriters could have offered more backstory to trafficking ringleader Paklung (Joey Iwanaga), who seems to be too clean cut to get into this line of business.

Manatsanun Phanlerdwongsakul plays Yadong, an honest police officer who actually wants to figure out what’s going on with the missing children. Yadong’s role could have been larger, but expanding her subplot out further likely would have slowed some of the momentum.

Paklung’s henchman actually organizing the kidnapping, Mr. Song (Sahajak Boonthanakit), makes for a pretty great mid-tier boss while his son, Ho (Brian Le) is a force along the lines of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees.

Just to cement The Furious as a serious contender for elite martial arts status, Yayan Ruhian (Boy Kills World) strolls through as Paklung’s vicious bow and arrow wielding enforcer, Tak.

One of the best aspects of The Furious is the variety of fighting styles utilized by the combatants. They’re skilled in different techniques making for intriguing matchups especially once the film comes down to the final act.

While there is no shortage of jaw-dropping battles, the final act of The Furious is a contender for best action sequence ever staged. It’s unrelenting, bloody, incredibly elaborate and brilliantly executed. This is the rare fight that viewers will marvel at what’s playing out on the screen while also admiring the skill it took to pull it off with such a breakneck pace.

The Furious isn’t one of those action films you’ll quickly forget, but the main event battle alone makes it worth revisiting over and over again. Fans of bloody martial arts action movies absolutely won’t want to miss one of the genre’s all-time best while it’s in theaters.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Photo Credit: Lionsgate

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