‘The Furious’ Movie Review | DIFF 2026
We continue our coverage of the Dallas International Film Festival with The Furious. As a film, The Furious promises exactly what its title advertises: many angry characters. And when the film begins, the emotions are immediately justified as a kid takes an arrow to the face. Akin to John Wick, the film has a clear antagonist. For the John Wick franchise, it was a villain who killed a puppy. For The Furious, it’s a father going up against an empire of child traffickers. A creative choice that allows the audience to root for every threat to be brutally beaten or dismantled by the hands of an angry and protective father.
Directed by Kenji Tanigaki, the film centers on two protagonists. At the heart of the story are Wang Wei (Miao Xie) and his daughter Rainy (Enyou Yang). The setup is small but manages to accomplish a lot in minimal time. Wang is mute, but he is quite expressive when speaking to his daughter. Rainy is a fierce little girl with a sweet demeanor, yet she packs a lot of grit for a small child. Wang trains her to defend herself, understanding how dangerous the world around them has become.
After a brief argument between father and daughter, Rainy runs off to be with her thoughts. A stray boy then baits her, saying his parents are in trouble. Rainy follows the child to assist, but is abruptly kidnapped and thrown into the back of a vehicle by two strange men. Wang witnesses the abduction from afar and begins ferociously chasing her abductors.
Simultaneously, an investigative journalist named Navin (Joe Taslim) searches for his wife by operating undercover as a potential buyer in the grim market. While Navin poses as a purchaser at a club, Wang follows the evidence of his missing daughter to the same venue. Eventually, Wang and Navin realize they are on the same team and join forces to hurt everyone involved.
Kenji Tanigaki ‘s action film feels restrained until it pops
For the first two-thirds of The Furious, the film feels slightly handcuffed in its action. There are some amazing sequences with outstanding choreography, but for a film that features cast members from The Raid, one can feel an American tameness in the execution. As the safety sets in, the movie begins to feel like it might be drawing to an end. And my first thought was, “That’s it?”
Then, the last 30 to 40 minutes of the movie begin to ramp up, and The Furious unleashes some of the most visceral, violent action scenes since The Night Comes for Us. The sequences are highly stylized, mean, and the stakes are immensely high. Injuries and deaths occur to characters that American viewers are not accustomed to, and the setting breaks all the rules of what a viewer might consider dangerous. For example, it feels heavily inspired by the police station scene from The Terminator.
That said, the film makes great use of prop-based combat, as in The Raid 2: Berandal. Especially in terms of hammer combat, two scenes feature hammer-inspired fights: one with a standard hammer and another, more intense, featuring a massive steel hammer swung against our main characters. It’s not as memorable as the hammer girl in the subway fight from The Raid 2, but it still satisfies that action genre itch. And the sequence might make the brute presence of actor Brian Le an action star like Taslim.
The Furious has imperfect sound but immaculate action
The Furious has its flaws, and most of them stem from the ADR. As the film begins, characters speak, and it feels like dubbed audio. It caused a moment of panic, as I was concerned we were about to watch a movie without subtitles. Thankfully, this was not the case, as the next scene finally had characters speaking in their native languages. Still, it was an issue that others noticed as well. A fellow writer from the site also mentioned having concerns about the possible use of AI to make some of the various dubbing match the lips. We don’t have any evidence that AI was used; it was merely an observation.
Questionable audio aside, The Furious delivers the high-octane action promised by the trailer. It begins at a level nine on the fist fighting scale and ends on a level fifteen on the unflinching violence by the time it reaches the grand finale. Like The Raid, it’s minimal on plot, but that is purposeful. The audience is here to see bone-crunching choreography, high stakes, and characters to root for. And The Furious provides these qualities in abundance, even if it takes a while to push the line truly.
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