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I’m late to the fight with my review of Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious. I wanted this one out when the film hit theaters last month, but work, my daughter’s surgery, and her recovery stepped into the ring and life intervened again. I did manage to share my exclusive interviews with Tanigaki and stars Joe Taslim and Xie Miao (click here for all three exclusive chats), but the review had to wait. By now, nearly every action-film blogger has already thrown down their take, hoping to land a quote on the eventual Blu-ray cover. So does my opinion still matter? Absolutely.
With The Furious crashing onto Digital this week, there was no way I was keeping quiet. This is exactly the kind of movie that belongs in my Essential Action category: essential viewing for anyone who lives for the genre. Spoiler alert: this film doesn’t merely deliver some of the best action of 2026—or any recent year. It storms in like Bloodsport, John Wick, and The Raid, grabs the genre by the throat, and dares it to evolve. Every time you think Tanigaki and fight coordinator Kensuke Sonomoura (Baby Assassins, Ghost Killer) have shown you the limit, they answer with, “Hold our beers,” and unleash something even more insane. If you love action, The Furious is not just essential—it is mandatory.
The plot is the one place where I can throw a small punch. We’ve seen the one-man-army rescue mission before, and Liam Neeson practically built a subgenre around it with the Taken films. This time, criminally underrated martial-arts star Xie Miao (Hunt the Wicked, My Father is a Hero) plays Wang Mei, a struggling single father who is also mute and trying to raise his daughter Rainy (Enyou Yang) during a summer visit in Thailand. When Rainy is taken, Wang launches into a desperate rescue mission. As a struggling single dad myself, I’ll admit he has me beat—but I can talk, so there’s that.
On the other side of this violent equation is Navin, played by action legend Joe Taslim (The Raid, The Night Comes for Us). Navin’s wife, a reporter who got too close to a human-trafficking operation, has also been kidnapped. Two fathers. Two missing loved ones. One collision course with an army of monsters. When Wang and Navin realize they are fighting the same war, they join forces—and everyone involved is about to have a very bad day. And by everyone, I mean EVERYONE!
The setup may be familiar, but Tanigaki knows the real mission is the action. He surrounds our heroes with villains worthy of the punishment. The Raid’s Yayan Ruhian turns his Mad Dog legacy into something even nastier as Tak, a tracksuit-wearing, arrow-slinging psychopath who treats murder like recreation. Brian Le (Gladiator Underground) is the human wrecking ball Ho, a runaway freight train who uses his entire body like a heat-seeking missile. Baby Assassins star Joey Iwanaga plays Paklung, who begins as the brains and eventually reveals some vicious kicking power. Then there is action-villain specialist Sahajak Boonthanakit (Skin Trade) as Mr. Song, the operation’s ruthless leader. Boonthanakit has made a career out of playing the worst people imaginable, and he brings every ounce of that menace here.
Before unleashing the action apocalypse, Tanigaki makes room for genuine human stakes. Wang and Navin are not empty vessels built only to break bones; they are fathers fighting to bring their loved ones home. The danger carries weight, the consequences feel real, and the audience has every reason to stay locked into their rescue mission. Xie Miao and Joe Taslim play these determined heroes with total commitment, making their eventual collision with the enemy feel personal, urgent, and explosive.
Miao and Taslim generate terrific buddy-action chemistry. Miao is phenomenal as a mute, communicating entire emotional worlds through physical performance. Taslim remains one of action cinema’s elite performers, able to switch from sympathetic hero to lethal villain without breaking stride. Together, they create an electric partnership, and Taslim continues to prove that he may be one of the great treasures of modern action cinema.
I could spend all day describing the film’s dark, brooding atmosphere, but we came here for the fights—and the fights are absolutely relentless. The Furious is a kinetic marathon of bone-cracking impact, blood-spraying brutality, and savage martial-arts invention. Tanigaki and Sonomoura don’t simply stage action; they redesign the language of it. Miao, Taslim, and the rest of this elite cast deliver barbaric, unflinching combat that feels stripped down, ferocious, and wildly inventive. The choreography is fierce, gravity-defying, and packed with no-holds-barred mayhem. This is a master class in empty-handed destruction, and it leaves almost every other action movie standing in the smoke.
The highlights keep coming. Miao goes to war inside an MMA Octagon with a ball-peen hammer, bludgeoning attackers with ferocious brutality. At one point, he climbs over charging assailants like a human ladder while turning the entire encounter into a savage circus of broken bones. Then Taslim and fellow The Raid co-star Yayan Ruhian collide in a rematch that promised insanity and delivers even more than expected. And when Wang and Rainy play a lethal game of motorcycle chicken with a horde of thugs, the sequence becomes a sadistic motocross nightmare where survival is the only trophy.
The finale is a blood-soaked chef’s kiss and worth the price of admission by itself. For the climactic barrage, Tanigaki and Sonomoura rip away the brakes, bend physics, and unleash choreography that is both grounded and completely extreme. Some viewers may complain that the fighting is unrealistic, but let’s be honest: if this film chased realism, every fight would end in two minutes with grabbing, pushing, and running away. The Furious understands exactly what its audience wants, and it delivers that action with savage confidence.
The final thirty-plus minutes are the stuff of action legend. On paper, it is a familiar setup: Wang and Navin storm a local police station to take on Paklung, Tak, and Ho. But standard definitions end the moment the fighting begins. Sonomoura transforms the location into a brutal, beautiful ballet of fists, feet, knees, elbows, and every other weapon the human body can provide. Multiple martial-arts disciplines collide in a blaze of movement: Xie Miao’s fluid Kung Fu, Joe Taslim’s precise and punishing Judo, Yayan Ruhian’s lightning-fast Silat, Joey Iwanaga’s kicking mastery, and Brian Le’s Mack-truck power. Like Bloodsport, The Furious celebrates the variety of unarmed combat and turns it into something thunderous.
The choreography in The Furious feels like almost nothing we have seen before. The fighters move with a physical vocabulary that is difficult to explain and impossible to ignore. As a martial artist who has studied for more than thirty years, I watched this film and saw combat presented from a completely fresh angle. It should be studied as a blueprint for how action can be executed with precision, force, creativity, and fearless imagination. Tanigaki and Sonomoura have created a new action-design language, then delivered every move with unbridled power and flawless timing. This is the kind of movie you need to watch again and again just to process what you witnessed.
To sum it all up, The Furious is a full-throttle game changer. This is martial-arts action cinema redefined for a new generation, with Xie Miao and Joe Taslim leading an insanely talented cast at the top of its game. The precision is masterful, the violence is ferocious, and the film leaves you asking the most dangerous question an action movie can ask: “Now what?” How does action cinema follow this? The Furious doesn’t just raise the bar—it obliterates it.
The Furious is next-level action from a team of Navy SEAL-caliber talents. It lives up to the hype, then launches a spinning hook kick through the wall with savage, visceral, bone-shattering combat. The story brings heartfelt human emotion, while the action delivers blood, brutality, and relentless momentum. This is elite martial-arts cinema that could redefine the genre for years to come.
VERDICT: 5 Out of 5 Stars
The Furious Sets a New Standard for Martial Arts Action Cinema and is a Brutal, Visceral and Relentless Assault on the Senses!
The Furious is the Movie to Beat for the Best of 2026
A Perfect Slice of Bad Ass Cinema!
The Furious is Now Available on Digital & VOD!
