The Furious: Breathtaking martial arts ferocity

The Furious (2025) • View trailer

Four stars* (out of five); rated R, for strong, bloody violence, gore and profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD options

By Derrick Bang

The dramatic paradigm shifts in martial arts movies can be traced to specific actors and directors.

 

Bruce Lee kick-started the franchise (pun intended) with 1973’s Enter the Dragon, and Jackie Chan moved the needle a decade later, with his signature blend of death-defying stunt work and comedic touches.

 

Having tracked the vicious Mr. Song to his ice factory, Navin (Joe Taslim, left) and
Wang (Miao Xie) prepare to battle several dozen knife-wielding thugs.

Welsh writer/director Gareth Evans and Indonesian martial arts star Iko Uwais upped the ante again, with 2012’s pulse-pounding The Raid: Redemption and its 2014 sequel.

And now we have this jaw-dropping burst of fury from Japanese director Kenji Tanigaki and star Miao Xie, which hits the ground running — literally — and never lets up. Given that it’s available via streaming services, rabid fans of such films are guaranteed to hit PAUSE and REPLAY more than once. Frankly, I challenge them to watch the entire film without having done so.

 

That said, Tanigaki’s film also gets grotesquely violent, gory and — on occasion — tastelessly macabre, making it totally unsuitable for mainstream viewers or those with delicate sensibilities. Tanigaki and his writers — Tin Shu Mak, Zhilong Lei, Kwan-Sin Shum and Frank Hu — go out of their way to be gleefully outrageous at times.

 

They revel in it. So will folks who love this stuff.

 

But Tanigaki and Xie can’t take full credit. Their efforts are tightly interwoven with the equally smashing work by cinematographer Meteor Cheung, editor Chris Tonick, and fight choreographer Kenske Sonomura, along with a supporting cast of martial arts notables from Japan, China, Hong Kong and the United States.

 

The term “copacetic” isn’t anywhere near strong enough to applaud the collaborative result.

 

The setting is “somewhere in Southeast Asia.” As established during a prologue, journalist Matia Phan (JeeJa Yanin) has been investigating the disappearance of numerous children, always from poorer neighborhoods ... much to the dismay of her husband, Navin (Joe Taslim), who regards this work as dangerous.

 

Probing an area on her own one day, the search leads to a particularly grimy hellhole, where she’s drawn to the sound of a crying child. Alas, her rescue attempt goes horribly awry, despite her heroic effort to out-fight a gaggle of baddies.

 

Cut to elsewhere, some time later, as we meet Wang Wei (Xie) and his adolescent daughter, Rainy (Enyou Yang). Wang is mute, and earns a modest living as a handyman; Rainy, who is visiting, usually lives in China with her grandmother. 

 

Brief mention is made of an unspecified “head injury” that occasionally prompts Wang to gingerly touch his scalp. (If this detail is intended to imply some sort of vulnerability, it’s apparently negligible, because it never impedes subsequent events.)

The Raid: Redemption — Leaves you breathless!

The Raid: Redemption (2011) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity and relentless strong, brutal violence 
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.20.12


This sucker hits the ground running — literally — and never lets up.

Cinema has a grand tradition of stylish few-versus-many action thrillers, with notable highlights including Zulu, Rio Bravo and John Carpenter’s career-making remake of the latter, Assault on Precinct 13.

Having battled his way into the lab where a local crime lord processes drugs,
rookie cop Rama (Iko Uwais, left) discovers that the chemists — rather
vexingly! — also happen to be dangerous martial arts experts. The resulting
skirmish is merely one of many stylish interludes on route to Rama's climactic
confrontation with this story's Big Bad.

The Raid: Redemption is just as likely to make a star of writer/director Gareth Evans. This is the third feature helmed by the Welsh filmmaker, and the second set in Indonesia, amid the nastier elements of Jakarta’s underworld.

It’s also Evans’ second collaboration with Indonesian martial arts star Iko Uwais; the two met at the latter’s pencak silat martial arts school, when Evans was scouting Indonesian locations in 2007, while making a documentary. To say that Evans was impressed would be an understatement; he and Uwais have been a filmmaker/actor team ever since.

Plenty of martial arts champions have embraced acting, but success in that realm involves more than smooth moves; one must possess camera presence ... not to mention the ability to credibly deliver a line. It’s also a collaborative art; a good director is necessary, in order to frame the performer in a manner that makes him — or her — look iconic.

No surprise, then, that many answer the call, but few achieve the fame of, say, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, Jet Li or Tony Jaa. Uwais reminds me of Jaa; both are grimly ferocious fighters, well able to tailor their jaw-dropping moves within the confines of a camera frame.

Not that Uwais needs to worry much about confines. Evans and cinematographer Matt Flannery move the camera as inventively and aggressively as a given scene demands, traveling through windows — and doors, walls and floors — to keep pace with the action. But — and this is important— without the irritating “shaky-cam” jiggle that has become so ubiquitous these days.

Evans also handles the editing, and he knows when to temper the frantic pursuit of a chase with fixed camera placement, so we can better appreciate the explosive physical mayhem. Most importantly, he doesn’t “build” fight scenes in the editing bay, with sharp cuts; as with Fred Astaire’s best dance scenes, the pandemonium here unfolds during extended takes, so we can better appreciate the physical talent on display.