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.
Fumika (Akari Takaishi, Baby Assassins) is your average college student. She has a crappy job, constantly fends off creepy men pestering her, and she’s very clumsy. Seriously, she falls down. A lot. Things change a wee bit, however, when she meets the ghost of a vicious hitman, Kudo (Masanori Mimoto, First Love), who occasionally possesses her and takes control of her body. It’s like Upgrade or even Venom at times as the two consciousnesses occupy the same space. (Or All of Me with fisticuffs?) After some coaxing, she agrees to help him exact revenge against the people who killed him. So goes the plot of Kensuke Sonomura’s new action-oriented ghost story Ghost Killer.
Hydra begins with every man’s worst nightmare, being killed at a urinal. Okay, maybe not, but it’s a definite concern and something to think about in the bathroom. It’s a hell of a way to kick off a movie, even if most of what follows fails to live up to the opening. Until the very end.
