The Furious

The Furious (Huo Zhe Yan) (2025)

Runtime: 113 minutes

Directed by: Kenji Tanigaki

Starring: Miao Xae, Joe Taslam, Enyou Yang, Brian Le, Yayan Ruhian

From: In the United States, Lionsgate

Or: In this nightmare of a June 2026 for me-where even the browser that I use (Firefox) is now broken after today’s update-how an unnecessary 4th act can ruin a movie, especially one I’d been looking forward to.

In the 13 (!) years I’ve been here and the 4,001 films I’ve now reviewed (!!), this is only the third time I can recall marking a review as containing spoilers. However, I feel this is necessary to explain why Furious was a letdown for me. Recently, I heard great buzz elsewhere & even comparisons to The Raid. I love The Raid-the sequel, much less so. That had a bad story and absurd action that was just Too Much. Sadly, those are also my complaints with The Furious. I’ll explain in a review later this month why June has been so miserable, but even at the cineplex my luck has been rotten.

It's set in “a city in Southeast Asia”; why they couldn’t name Bangkok is beyond my comprehension. In any event, a mute Chinese badass has his young daughter kidnapped by child traffickers. Meanwhile, another badass has a missing wife-she was investigating said traffickers. They team up. Now, the action beats reminded me of modern pro wrestling—overly choreographed and becoming overkill. Unlike modern pro wrestling (which is just absolutely unwatchable, for the most part), most of the action here was quite delightful to view. Dudes Getting Wrecked (TM) was a lot of fun here.

Regrettably, the idea of a 4th at that has been prevalent in 21st century Hollywood and has hampered many a film reared its ugly head here. How our mute hero is so unstoppable he might as well join the Avengers or Justice League isn’t my preference yet I see the same thing in Indian movies and that’s not a deal-breaker. Unfortunately, there are others that are also unstoppable; there’s a villain that out of nowhere in the 4th act that suddenly slaughters all his bosses and is superhuman out of nowhere.

Things go down the toilet once the 3rd act ends w/ the climatic rescue of the children from the traffickers. Besides that villain suddenly becoming superhuman, we see the return of Hulking Brute superhuman. There’s a big brawl early in the 2nd act where we see Hulking Brute hold his own 1 on 2 against our humans, until his face is literally beaten into a bloody pulp; yes, that image of his face is fuzzy in the background yet is still obvious, especially on a cinema screen. Yet, the 4th act begins with Hulking Brute resurrecting… and his face is fine! That’s right, no damage aside from a scar or two!

I should have walked out of the movie at that point, no lie. From that point, everything in the 4th act was just stupid and overblown, full of poor ideas. Sure, some plot strands would have been left unresolved but the three acts that cinephiles would probably decry as “basic” would have been hunky-dory with me, several dumb moments aside. Instead, a sour taste was left in my mouth with those dumb superhuman villains; I know that no one else will agree but that’s my honest opinion. “Plot armor” is another giant 21st century movie problem that I wish would be banished.

It was nice seeing a reunion of Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian from The Raid, at least; however, IMO this film is not legendary like that was, a joyous theatrical experience. Shame about that 4th act… it’d be nice if June would stop being a nightmare for me, but hopefully the next film I review will be one where I am not so negative.