Review: 'The Furious' is an inventive Hong Kong martial-arts movie with fast and bloody action from start to finish

Pick practically anything off the shelf at a Home Depot, and the folks behind “The Furious” will turn it into a weapon — creating the most endlessly inventive and freakishly violent martial-arts movie this side of “The Raid” movies.

In an unnamed southeast Asian country, Wang Wei (Xie Miao) works quietly to provide for himself and his daughter, Rainy (Yang Enyou), who communicates with her mute father using sign language. When a child trafficking ring plucks Rainy off the streets, Wang tries to fight back — and, with fast moves and righteous anger, he nearly succeeds. 

When the bad guys get away with Rainy, Wang goes to the police, who say they can’t help. A woman sergeant, Yadong (Manatsanun Phanlerdwongsakul), tries to take on the case, but her commander overrules her. Later, to no one’s surprise, we find out the commander is in the pocket of the wealthy cabal in charge of the child trafficking.

Wang spots one of Rainy’s kidnappers, which leads him to a high-security nightclub, where he starts bashing heads into tables, glass partitions and other heads. One of the people he encounters there, Navin (Joe Taslim), turns out to be on the same side — he’s a journalist who’s been investigating the missing children, along with his reporter wife, Matia (JeeJa Yanin), who we see get kidnapped before the opening credits. 

Wang and Navin team up, and become a two-man wrecking crew — using knives, hammers, ice blocks, lead pipes and whatever else is handy to take out the bad guys. Is the bloody violence too vicious? Maybe, until you’re reminded that those on the receiving end are trafficking young children, so they get what’s coming to them.

Director Kenji Tanigaki stages one physically impressive fight sequence after another, all the way up to a two-on-two final boss battle that gets complicated by a fifth fighter (Brian Le) returning to the action — and seemingly alternating his loyalties with each hit, encapsulating the entertainingly blood-soaked chaos of the entire film.

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‘The Furious’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence and language. Running time: 113 minutes; in English, and in Chinese and Thai with subtitles.