Resuscitating reviews I wrote at festivals that Patreon’s crap search engine wouldn't previously have delivered because the titles weren't in the subject line.
The Furious (Kenji Tanigaki): 61/100 [TIFF '25]
Penciled this one in because Tanigaki was stunt coordinator on Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, which featured some of the most creative action choreography I’ve ever seen. Turns out Soi Cheang’s directorial elegance played a large role in that, but The Furious still showcases a staggering quantity of hand-to-hand combat that’s been intricately worked out both in front of and for the camera, with copious multi-plane “routines” (for lack of a better word). Plenty brutal, and you need to be okay with suspending disbelief about how much punishment the human body can withstand (it wouldn’t be that much more literally in-credible than what we see here had a character just brushed off falling to 34th Street from the top of the Empire State Building), but there’s gotta be at least a full hour of violent action in this not-quite-two-hour movie, and very little of that’s less than impressive. Wish so much of the dialogue weren’t in halting English, but the protagonist is mute, so it mostly balances out. If I ultimately prefer this by a hair to Walled In, it’s because that film wallows in Lore when asses aren’t being kicked, whereas The Furious goes with a clean, simple narrative about a dad rescuing his daughter who’s been abducted by human traffickers. Between convoluted and dumb, I choose dumb.