The Furious review – dial-shifting dadsploitation mayhem as a father goes in search of a kidnapped daughter | Video

MeIt continues to happen: every few years, usually in a small Hollywood drama, Overton’s window of graphic violence is replaced by an oriental fascination. Thundering in the bloody feet of and Raid movies and Hindi punch-’em-up Kill, a martial arts show from Japan, Hong Kong director Kenji Tanigaki opens in the category of generic dadsploitation. “Somewhere in Southeast Asia”, as the subtitle goes, Chinese mute Wang Wei (Miao Xie) bursts into tears after smugglers capture his daughter (Enyou Yang). Having Hulk-smashed his way out of the Taken box, The Furious begins to stop. Boy, does that rock it; the closing half hour achieves an intensity unmatched by any other release this year.

There are one or two plots. Based on the classic John Woo films, Tanigaki has its hero running into an undercover journo (Joe Taslim’s Danny Dyer) and his reasons for chasing down the dealers; this one-way approach has the advantage of keeping things simple while turning the dial to 11. The complexities are reserved for the frame itself: the jaw-dropping, seemingly bare-bones actors take out the bruises on the concrete floor, and Tanigaki’s well-placed cameras capture the unexpected food and dust build-up. It’s like someone brought a rainbow and a hammer to the dance, and they want to use it.

The Saturday night crowd won’t care, but Tanigaki doesn’t have the creative ideas that elevated the Raid films. The precision of his parts, however, cannot be disputed, and the transitions create loud music between moving bodies. Reaching the peak with the royal sound of many years, Tanigaki’s film was not as bad as it could have been, increasing its danger with the skill of the game and art, matching this intensity with the production and giving as much pleasure as the chase. One caveat: you may need to sleep longer afterwards.