'The Furious' (2025) Movie Review

Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious is the action movie of the year. It may be the action movie of a few years, because holy hell does it go hard. If having the legendary stunt coordinator and action director in the big chair didn’t already pique your interest, he also enlisted the great Kensuke Sonomura—director of Ghost Killer, Hydra, and Bad City, as well as all around stunt badass—as his action director. Add to this mix a cast fronted by Miao Xie (An Eye For an Eye) and Joe Taslim (The Night Comes For Us), and that heavily features Joey Iwanaga (Baby Assassins 2), Brian Le (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Yayan Ruhian (The Raid), and even an appearance by Jeeja Yanin (Chocolate), and this is action-movie-fan-Christmas.

 

The result is an unrelenting escalation of high-octane glory that piles one all-timer of an action scene on top of another. Bursting at the seams with elaborate, inventive fight choreography, executed to perfection by some of the best in the business, this is a non-stop highlight reel for everyone involved. It’s unhinged in the best possible way. 

 

[Related Reading: 'Ghost Killer' Movie Review]

 

Miao Xie plays Wang Wei, a mute handyman whose precocious daughter is kidnapped. Taslim is Navin, whose partner (Yanin), a crusading journalist, disappeared while investigating a story. Since their goals align, the two reluctantly team up to find their loved ones and take down a sprawling human trafficking ring. A human trafficking ring that includes Iwanaga, Le, Ruhian, and the great Sahajak Boonthanakit (Only God Forgives). The story may be simple, but much like Marshawn Lynch, The Furious is all about that action, boss. It offers an ideal reason for them to dig deeper and deeper into the seedy criminal underbelly and delivers an endless stream of goons for our heroes to destroy.

 

You know how a lot of movies cut back and forth between storylines to keep the narrative moving forward, checking in on this or that character and their arc? This movie also does that, but in this instance, we jump back and forth from one epic brawl to another. It still pushes the plot ahead and develops the primary players, but it does so with punches and kicks, beating all the ass along the way. You have to love narrative and thematic progression via fisticuffs.

 

[Related Reading: 'The Night Comes for Us' Movie Review]

 

Honestly, I could go on and on singing the praises of this movie. Like how Wang goes on an all-out, full-speed foot chase while wearing flip flops, how a movie-long mean streak begins with Ruhian shooting a child with a bow and arrow four minutes in, that Le is basically an unstoppable, unkillable clobbering machine, or how cinematographer Meteor Cheung’s camera swoops and soars but never intrudes and always manages perfectly capture and display the exquisite fighting skills. Oh yeah, Flying Lotus (Ash, Kuso) does some of the music, just because. 

 

For everything I could, and probably will say ad nauseum in the future, I’ll save us both some time. It boils down to this: If you are an action fan, you owe it to yourself to watch The Furious as soon as humanly possible. This is propulsive, relentless, vicious, badass action featuring a murderer’s row of cinematic titans staged and executed by some of the top players in the business. It is not to be missed. [Grade: A]