The Furious (2026) Review
I attended Cinemark’s Secret Screening the other day where I was able to see The Furious. This is a film that I wasn’t super excited about, martial arts movies aren’t really my thing. But all the early reviews for this movie were extremely positive so I was curious to check this movie out. What did I think about it? Was it any good? Let’s get started!
The Review
When it comes to The Furious, the film is at its best when it’s delivering the martial arts action that everybody watching it wants. That’s the most important thing to get right when it comes to this movie, and it did. From beginning to end there’s all sorts of gnarly and awesome fight scenes that are brutal and filled with crowd pleasing moments. In every single action scene, there’s at least one moment that got a big reaction from my audience. I’ll have my issues with the film that I’ll talk about later, but the things it needed to get right did get right, like the action. In the action scenes, the characters are using the environment and the people they’re fighting as weapons in the sequence. There’re multiple scenes where one kill will be fighting off multiple people, and the guy will be using the other people to defeat the other people. It’s not just the fact that it’s skilled martial artists and stunt performers hitting and kicking people, it’s more complex than that with using body parts and other items in the action scenes. I’m not a big martial arts fan; that’s a genre that I lack experience in. So, I’m not sure how common that is in martial arts films, like Jackie Chan’s films but it’s very cool to see done in this film. And done in a different way how Hollywood action films like Jason Bourne and John Wick are done, which are vastly different but equally great.
That was one of the things that I really liked about watching this movie was that it felt different. The plot of the film is very straight forward; it’s a martial arts version of Taken. It’s a plot that we’ve seen before, and we know all the moments that are going to happen. But since this isn’t made by your typical Hollywood studio and production, it’s able to feel different with the ways that the action is done and shot. There’s a certain over the top cartoonish nature to the action (and I mean that as a positive), but Hollywood action films don’t deliver that same level of over-the-top action as this film did. Even the fact that it’s not a Hollywood cast here, they cast more Chinese actors and not big Hollywood stars. There’s one guy that I recognized from the recent Mortal Kombat movies, but besides that I didn’t recognize any of the names or the faces when I went onto IMDB. What’s fun about these secret screenings at Cinemark is that you watch movies that are lesser known, and you discover talent that you wouldn’t otherwise have known about or heard of.
If I had to say some negatives, I thought the structure of the movie was a bit weird. What I mean by that is the first 60% of the movie is about this father trying to rescue his daughter from gangsters, that mission is done 70% of the way through the film. But there’s still 30% of the film left, and the purpose is to defeat some of the villains that were set up earlier on. The last action set piece is like 25-30 minutes long at the police station and it’s a cool action set piece. There’s a lot of brutal and violent moments in there, but it feels tacked on. It doesn’t flow organically as it should have. There’s a scene in that transition where one of our villains kills somebody and that sets in motion sort motivations in the third act. That scene felt like it was too late in the film, had that scene happened earlier I think the transition would’ve felt less awkward. Even beyond that, since the film does feel long, it means that at a certain point in time in the third act you’re waiting for the film to be done. It felt like the director had all of these images that he wanted to include in the film and decided to put them all in the third act, when I don’t think it’s necessary. Had the third act been tightened up by 5-10 minutes, then I would’ve liked the movie better.
Also, and this is a smaller thing but the police characters in the film I didn’t think worked at all. They felt too underdeveloped, especially when they get their moment to shine about halfway through the film. It’s meant to be this victorious “here comes the calvary” moment but it fails because the movie doesn’t do a good enough job of building up the police to be these characters that are meant to have this heroic moment. I get that’s not what the film is about, but they could’ve done more with that to make those moments hit a bit more. The other problem with them, the dubbing for them is very distracting and doesn’t fit the characters or the films. Whoever is doing the English dubbing for the police characters, felt like they were acting in a completely different movie. The movie is serious with a few jokes here and there, but it’s by no means a comedy. The dubbing from the police felt like they were acting in a more lighthearted film. Whenever the police were on screen, which was only three or four scenes, it pulled me out of the film and felt distracting.
Overall, as somebody who is not a massive martial arts fan, I dug The Furious. I think if you’re more into the martial arts world and love these kinds of movies, then you’re going to have a really good time at the movies. I had my issues with the film, but still overall liked it and would recommend it. However, it’s not a film that I’m likely to rewatch a whole lot.
The Score: 8.4/10 (B)
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