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ReviewThe Furious movie review: pan-Asian martial arts talents unite for brutal action spectacle
Generic, unfunny and emotionally hollow, The Furious will nevertheless delight those who simply want to watch people getting slaughtered
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3.5/5 stars
The Furious tells a threadbare story that could have been sketched on a napkin. It lacks a single fully developed character. It is so emotionally hollow that you will feel little, even when children are endangered on screen. It has zero sense of humour. Its dialogue is forgettable. But it is, to its target crowd, the best Hong Kong film in a very long time.
Whether you share that last sentiment will depend entirely on your appetite for watching people getting slaughtered by frantic hammer blows to the body, arrows to the forehead and machetes slashing from every conceivable angle.
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The latest directing effort from veteran stuntman Kenji Tanigaki (Enter the Fat Dragon) – who is best known for his work on a range of Donnie Yen Ji-dan films – The Furious is not just an uncompromising showcase of its makers’ passion for martial arts cinema, but also an ecstatic, virtuosic display of action choreography as an art form.
A synopsis for The Furious is about as useful as a libretto in a ballet programme, even if its generic script is shockingly credited to four award-winning screenwriters. Instead, your guide into this carnage is former child actor Xie Miao (1994’s The New Legend of Shaolin) as Wang Wei, a mute martial artist with an unspecified background.
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