"The Furious" — Hong Kong Action Cinema's Bone-Crushing Comeback
Kenji Tanigaki, promoted from action choreographer to director, takes Taken's basic skeleton and stretches it into two hours of uninterrupted fight-scene recital. Xie Miao and Joe Taslim never let up.
According to Harry Stainer's review in Empire, by the time The Furious's blood-soaked final duel arrives, you'd struggle to count five minutes over its two-hour runtime when someone isn't being punched, kicked, or having their face slammed into a table. Kenji Tanigaki, moving from action choreography to the director's chair, is completely at home in this territory; he takes the "my daughter's been kidnapped" skeleton of Taken and wraps it into a full-blown celebration of Hong Kong martial arts cinema.
The story — a mute father (Xie Miao) whose daughter is kidnapped, teaming up with a journalist (Joe Taslim) to hunt down a child-trafficking ring — doesn't promise anything new on the page. But Tanigaki's instincts are correct: he lets his characters fight instead of talk. Sets, corridors, streets, restaurant kitchens — all of them get used in near-single-take choreography. Xie Miao's physical language more than makes up for the absence of dialogue; Joe Taslim throws his hardest hits as if they cost him no effort at all.
The film's success lies in knowing exactly what the genre's audience wants and delivering it without a hitch. Those looking for emotional depth should head to a different theater; but for anyone wanting bone-crushing, breathless fight scenes with clear geography, this is one of the most satisfying action movies of the year.
Source: Empire — Harry Stainer