Hong Kong martial art action film “The Furious” is furious indeed. Once it does its very elementary setup at the beginning, the movie relentlessly goes up and up along with its seemingly plain hero who turns out to have a particular set of skills, and I came to admire its skill and ambition more as being often enthralled by a number of top-notch action scenes,

After the prologue scene which introduces some of its main villain characters, we meet the hero of the movie, who is a mute Chinese dude residing in some unspecified Southeast Asian city (The movie was mainly shot in Bangkok, Thailand, by the way). He has a young daughter who came from China to stay with him for a while, but he is adamant about her going back to China even though he has been happy to be with her, and this certainly frustrates her a lot.

It is implied that he thinks the city is not so safe for his daughter. There have been frequent cases of missing children in the city, and, as already shown to us during the prologue scene, there is indeed a big child trafficking organization somewhere in the city. Not long after she argues a bit with her father and runs away from him, our hero’s daughter happens to get kidnapped by several seedy members of this dangerous criminal organization, and we get the first action sequence in the film as he desperately tries to rescue his daughter with remarkable tenacity and stamina which somehow took me back to a similar chase scene in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991).

After he unfortunately fails to rescue his daughter in the end, our hero naturally runs into a local police station, but, not so surprisingly, he does not get much help from those police officers except one sympathetic female police officer, who subsequently becomes curious about who the hell he is. He is basically a nobody on the record, but she somehow senses that there is something more than that, and we soon see him becoming all the more determined to find his daughter by any means necessary.

 As already shown from the previous action sequence, he is surely a physical force to reckon with, and that is confirmed again during the next big action sequence, which is unfolded inside a place belonging to a middle-ranking member of that criminal organization. After he swiftly overpowers a bunch of goons coming at him, our hero comes across a guy named Navin (Joe Taslim), and then we are served with more physical action across the screen before Navin eventually reveals that he is actually an ally to help our hero find his daughter. Just like our hero, Navin has been in the middle of his own personal mission against that criminal organization, and it does not take much time for him and our hero to bond with each other as they stick together in front of more bad guys to come along their increasingly risky quest.

Around that point, the movie becomes quite intense to say the least, but it surprises and then excites us as throwing more action onto the screen with considerable skill and spirit. Sure, it is a bit too thin and simple in terms of story and character, but we can overlook that for a while as being often overwhelmed by the sheer intensity and energy generated from a series of well-executed physical action scenes in the movie. These physical action scenes are as fast and furious as required, but the camera of cinematographer Meteor Cheung smoothly and dexterously captures every physical movement on the screen, and the editing by Chris Tonick never feels choppy or scattershot at all even during the busiest moments in the movie.

I must tell you that the physical action scenes in the film are not only very electrifying but also utterly brutal at times. As a matter of fact, the movie made me wince as much as “The Raid: Redemption” (2011), but it presents its extreme moments of violence with style, personality, and a bit of wit at least. Sure, “The Raid: Redemption” is a well-made genre exercise, but it is rather monotonous as merely showing off numerous violent physical action scenes. In contrast, “The Furious” boldly and ambitiously goes further for more fun and excitement for us, and it is occasionally quite willing to go over the top to our amusement while also steadily maintaining the ground with admirable commitment.

It certainly helps that many of the main cast members in the film are skilled martial arts experts, who ably embody what my late mentor/friend Roger Ebert said in his review for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragoon” (2000): “The best martial arts movies have nothing to do with fighting and everything to do with personal excellence.” As the center of the story, Xie Miao, who once held his own place quite well besides Jet Li in “My Father Is a Hero” (1995) 31 years ago, diligently holds the center with his earnest acting, and Joe Taslim is also effective as an accidental partner of Xie’s character. Young performer Yang Enyou is fetching as her character comes to show more pluck than expected later in the story, and Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga, and Yayan Ruhian are as formidably menacing as demanded by their colorful villain characters. While some of you may be amused to see Ruhian fighting with Taslim as they once did in “The Raid: Redemption”, Le, who was crucial in that very hilarious action sequence in Oscar-winning film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (2022), functions as an unexpected source of twisted humor at times.

On the whole, “The Furious” is one of the most impressive action films of this year, and director Kenji Tanigaki, a Japanese filmmaker who has been mainly known for his action choreography career in Hong Kong action cinema, surely demonstrates here that he really knows how to engage and then enthrall his audiences. To be frank with you, I considered giving only three stars as being fairly satisfied around the middle of the film, but then it impressed and entertained me a lot more than expected, so I give an extra half star as a little gesture of my inconsequential compliment.