The Old Furiosity Shop: ‘The Furious,’ reviewed

In the first five minutes of the new Hong Kong/China action pic The Furious, we’re reminded of one of the time-tested truths of the exploitation subgenre: In real life, a character cannot get repeatedly slammed in the face with a steel automotive transmission housing without bleeding, at least slightly. In a movie, however, anything goes.

That lowbrow movie-house truism, and others, have been inspected and rigorously analyzed many times over the years, traditionally at drive-ins but lately more often in streaming horror and action items, in which the ultra-violence floats to the top like pond scum.

The Furious, directed by Japanese former stuntman Kenji Tanigaki from a screenplay by a trio of veteran mainland China and Hong Kong writers, and released in the U.S. by Lionsgate, is an eager case study of “Anything Goes.” In it, the young daughter of a tough but comparatively innocent man named Wang Wei (played by Miao Xie) gets kidnapped by brutal thugs bent on sex trafficking.

The same thing simultaneously happens to Navin, a fistically adept journalist played by Indonesian-Chinese actor Joe Taslim. The two adolescent girls are part of a group of helpless victims stolen by a cabal of loathsome gangsters.

Whereupon the two wronged fathers join forces to get their kids back and teach the hoods a lesson they’ll never forget. Cue an avalanche, a deluge and an eventually tedious torrent of mega-violent retribution. Punches; kicks; Muay Thai—the film was shot in Bangkok; electro-shock; a sledgehammer; a barefoot chase sequence over a street littered with broken glass—ouch!; bows and arrows; and more. When they run out of weapons in the last reel they even hurl bicycles at each other. The only missing piece of skulduggery is a pie fight—gotta save something for the sequel, after all.

There’s nothing here that industrious, bottom-feeding movie audiences haven’t seen before. The Furious passes in front of the spectators’ gaze in an all-too-familiar blur. Liam Neeson supposedly perfected the righteous avenging-dad routine in the Taken series—Charles Bronson’s game-changing string of vigilante Death Wish flicks notwithstanding. For nonstop chop-socky, writer-director Gareth Evans’ The Raid: Redemption (2011) and its follow-ups also set a seemingly impregnable bar, with their series of Indonesian-based bloodbath policiers about a rough night at a police station. Then, on the old-fashioned good clean fun side, let’s not forget the Three Stooges, or Laurel and Hardy’s silent, slapstick, pie-throwing  extravaganza, The Battle of the Century (1927), in which the boys destroy downtown Los Angeles.

The Furious is neither a documentary nor a meditation on the inherent ugliness of everyday life. Instead, it belongs to a potent comic mythology probably most amusingly illustrated by Kit ’n’ Kaboodle writer Brian McConnachie and illustrator Warren Sattler’s 1973 National Lampoon takeoff on the Tom and Jerry cartoon franchise, pound for pound one of the most violent popular juvenile narratives of all time. And yes, that includes John Kricfalusi’s Ren & Stimpy as well, not to mention the Brothers Grimm.

Generations of kids have guffawed at the war between the predatory cat Tom and his dangerously underestimated “victim,” a mouse called Jerry—created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and brought to movie and TV screens by MGM. The Lampoon sendup’s premise is that if what the funny cat and mouse did to each other were realistically presented—with severed limbs, protruding organs and more—it might be too gruesome to laugh at, even for pint-sized devotees of Saturday morning TV mayhem.

So where does that leave The Furious? 

Out on a limb. Nothing about the characters—neither the juvie victims, their determined action-hero guardians nor the menacing goons—rises above Tom and Jerry-style characterizations. The bald-headed bad guy, double-teamed by Wang Wei and Navin, gets a sledge hammer to the face followed by a speed bag to the skull. We’re not sure if that actually kills him, but we can hope. Laugh yourselves silly, cartoon fans.

* * *

In theaters June 11

NOTE FROM KELLY VANCE 6/22: In my review, I accidentally misstated the situation of a secondary character. In the case of the journalist Navin, it was his wife, not his daughter, who was victimized by the kidnappers. Thanks to the alert readers who helped clarify this plot point.