Director Kenji Tanigaki’s unlikely allies out to stop a child trafficking martial arts epic channels anime and the Shaw Brothers in crafting a literal thrill ride of a movie that keeps you hooked from start to finish.
THE FURIOUS (2026)
★★★★ OF ★★★★★ stars
It isn’t hyperbole at all to say that there will not be a better action movie this year than Kenji Tanigakl’s THE FURIOUS which hits theaters from Lionsgate this weekend. We caught this a couple of months ago at the Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans at a raucous midnight screening with the crowd being locked in with this film and the crazy fighting setpieces and part of me wondered is this festival bias. Having now caught this twice, I can say the hype is 100% real, The Furious is still amazing. Think the basic premise of Big Trouble in Little China, a man named Wang has a loved one taken from him by a gang of human traffickers and he’ll do anythuing to get them back. Then throw in a second story about a man named Navim out to find his missing journalist wife by infiltrating that same gang to expose them and put Wang and Navin on a collision course to both their aims and add like every awesome fighting game/anime trope you can and turn it up to 11 and then you have a slight inclination of what THE FURIOUS is, with a dash of 80’s anime villainy and three stooges like side fighters.
No, folks, that’s not hyperbole. Joe Taslim’s Navin (who we saw in Mortal Kombat as Subzero and Mortal Kombat 2 as Bi-Han/Noob Saibot) is our initial entry point into this world. His wife is taken out by this trafficking ring, led by Joey Iwanaga’s Pak Lung and his henchman Tak played by The Raid’s Yayan Ruhian. Iwanaga kills it in this, btw, channeling fightuing game energy and anime aura throughout and has one of the film’s most shocking setpieces involving the crime family he’s reluctantly made a member of due to his marriage. Navin inflitrates the ring by posing as an investor to Mr. Song, who runs the trafficking ring for Pak as part of the front for his ice factory in Indonesia. Wang, played by Miao Xie, is a mute Chinese fighter living in Indonesia in exile after the death of his wife. His daughter Rainy urges him to return home to China with her, but his loss is too great. That exile is challenged when Rainy is kidnapped by Song’s goons and Wang will do anything to save her. I mean ANYTHING. Run miles barefoot chasing a truck, take on a corrupt police foce, enter an MMA ring and destroy both the fighters. Once Navin and Wang team up, its just fight after fight after fight. It’s awesome. I will straight up say, you can’t spoil this movie. It’s like a Cannon film from the 80’s in plot, but the setpieces make it amazing. See this WITH a crowd, you’re robbing yourself if you don’t. It’s fucking amazing and the type of spectacle you need to see in a communal setting.
THE FURIOUS hits theaters June 12th. Go. Like now.
—