'The Furious' Delivers Catharsis at Full Velocity
Kenji Tanigaki is really good at kicking ass, and even better at making the best action movie of 2026.
Kung fu flicks are a lot like Drake: you don’t come for the triple entendres or sociopolitical critique; you come for a good-ass time.
And if there’s anyone in cinema who has mastered the art of hand-delivering exactly that, it’s stunt performer, fight choreographer, and professional ass-beater Kenji Tanigaki, who’s arrived on American shores just in time for Father’s Day with his latest foray into flying fists and feet, The Furious.
I’ve been extremely fortunate to have never experienced a kidnapping, but if I had an 11-year-old daughter named Rainy (Yang Enyou), and she got snatched up by some twisted child trafficking ring, I would imagine I would be pretty fucking pissed. This perfectly explains the temperament of mute handyman Wang (Xie Miao), and why he’s hell-bent on setting a Guinness World Record for how many bones he can break within one hour and 53 minutes of runtime.
Featuring some of the most insane fight choreography I’ve ever seen—treating somebody’s legs like uneven bars in order to do front flips on the floor is some other other shit—The Furious is eerily similar to extra-lean ground beef: it’s 90% ass kickery, 10% flimsy plot. But that flimsy plot is particularly timely, as we have a corrupt justice system bending over backward to redact protect the wealthy elites harming children. Sound like anyone you know?
Fortunately, Wang’s sidekick, Navin (Joe Taslim), is equally adept at impromptu orthopedic surgery. As they scour the city for Navin’s missing wife and Rainy, the beatdowns and brutality are as glorious as they are gory. Deploying everything from bike pedals to frozen heads as weapons, Wang and Navin slap a fresh coat of paint on trope after trope—tearing new assholes and cartilage along the way like a side-scrolling Sega Genesis beat-em-up.
The Furious makes a grand total of zero attempts to reinvent the wheel, and when the blueprint is executed so masterfully, the end result is one of the best kung fu flicks in years. More importantly, in an American society simmering with rage—in part due to our dwindling economy and political climate—Tanigaki delivers the exact catharsis that far too many of us crave. So if stab wounds and barefoot car chases can momentarily alleviate the constant gloom that awaits us after our morning coffee, then bring on the fisticuffs.
Lastly, if you haven’t done so already, please teach your kids kung fu.
You never know when it will come in handy.
The Furious premieres in theaters on June 12.