In the earliest, earliest days of cinema, the camera wasn’t pointed at actors living imaginary lives; it was pointed at real human beings doing real human things. They walked home from work, they got on and off trains, they snuggled their pets. I remain convinced that although movies can show us wonders that will never exist in the real world, it is especially entrancing to watch something that actually happened, especially when what happened frickin’ rules.
You don’t have to watch a documentary to see something real. Many of the best fictional films take advantage of incredible human achievements. Gene Kelly’s daredevil roller skating dance in “It’s Always Fair Weather” is more awe-inspiring than most CGI battle scenes. When Tony Jaa flings himself feet and face first through a tiny coil of barbed wire in “Ong-Bak,” it will always elicit a gasp, long after our digital monsters become ho-hum. I say this with no disrespect to VFX films, because a lot of them are pure magic, but there’s a special admiration we reserve for movies and performers who go the extra mile and perform feats of derring-do in person, not just in post.
Great dance movies and great fight movies invigorate the nerves and, I think, the soul. So it is with great pleasure that I watched Kenji Tanigaki’s “The Furious,” which doesn’t have any dancing but is one of the best fight movies of the 21st century. It’s a spectacular, run-and-gun, beat ‘em up, martial arts extravaganza and Tanigaki knows exactly how to film his acrobatic fighters to highlight their uncanny ability to wail on each other in new, gut-wrenching ways.
The plot is simplicity, and thank goodness, because no one goes to a fight movie for the plot. Xie Miao stars as Wei, a handyman whose daughter, Rainy (Yang Enyou), is abducted by child traffickers. Boy, did those guys make a huge mistake. Wei chases their truck on foot and they get beat down harder than Karen Carpenter’s drum set. (I realize this reference might be obscure, but trust me, Karen Carpenter was a hell of a drummer.)
The villains get lucky and speed away, and of course the cops are corrupt, because even an over-the-top fight movie can be realistic sometimes. So Wei tracks the traffickers down and, understandably, cracks their rib cages open with a ball-peen hammer. Along the way, he also fights Navin, played by Joe Taslim, a grieving husband who goes undercover to stop the trafficking ring and find out what happened to his missing wife, a reporter who tried to expose this crime wave. Our heroes kick each other’s butts before realizing, in classic comic book fashion, they should team up and punch evil dudes in the face together.
As a story, that’s about it. Wei and/or Navin fight in an MMA octagon, in an ice factory filled with frozen corpses, on motorcycles driving in hallways, everywhere they could think of with every prop they have handy. At one point, two characters fight to the death with bicycles. Not on bicycles, with bicycles. Just beating the crap out of each other using Schwinns like Klingon bat’leths. How can you not love that?
Every fight after the halfway point plays like a boss battle, so the only way you’ll know the movie isn’t over is because there’s someone left to kill. Joe Taslim’s “The Raid” co-star Yayan Ruhian shows up at the beginning with a bow and arrow, and if he’s still alive, there’s gotta be more movie left, because no filmmaker in their right mind wouldn’t end “The Furious” with those two fighting with a ladder and climbing all over that thing, because that’s cool as hell. Joey Iwanaga plays the handsome young business guy who’s secretly running the trafficking ring, and you know damn well he’ll be a homicidal badass eventually. When he proves it, that’s when “The Furious” goes off the rails in the best possible way.
It’s nice when an exciting genre film is about something, and “The Furious” technically is, but the messages are so simple and unassailable that they’re hardly worth exploring. Obviously child trafficking is evil, and everyone involved deserves the violent deaths that await them. Fathers will do anything to protect their children, or at least they should, and who can argue with that? Wei’s daughter bonds with another traumatized captive who did whatever he had to do to survive and fears he’s beyond redemption, and there’s a tragedy to that, but it still boils down to basic human empathy and forgiveness. There’s nothing wrong with this stuff. It’s just not complex.
“The Furious” hits like a sledgehammer — frequently with a sledgehammer — and it leaves a refreshing aftertaste. Oh what a sweet, sweet concussion “The Furious” is. Fast-paced, intense, stunning to behold, jam-packed with fight choreography that’s hard to describe in words. “It has to be seen to be believed” is a copout, as far as criticism goes, but that’s why movie cameras were invented — so you can see it, you can believe it and you can experience genuine wonder.
“The Furious” hits theaters in Hong Kong on Friday after premiering at TIFF.
