“The Furious” ( 火遮眼 Huǒ zhē yǎn)  is 113-minutes of inventive, violent Asian martial arts choreography, punctuated by splattering blood and the crunching of bodies meeting the fury of fatherly fists. All of this over-the-top violence is forgivable because of its driven by a mysterious Chinese father Wang Wei (Xie Miao) trying to save his daughter (Yang Enyou).

That’s not how it starts. From the beginning we’re peeping in dirty corridors through a hole and into a room. Following an intrepid reporter, Mati (Jija Yanin). She’s confronted by two men and although she fights and her denim jeans deserve an award, it doesn’t look good.

But what does that have to do with Wang Wei 王偉 (Wáng wěi)? Wang is a widowed father, whose daughter Rainy (雨晴Yǔqíng). He doesn’t seem to be quite legal and his daughter is only with him temporarily, soon to be returning to China. Wang can’t return to China, but we don’t know why. He makes a living as a low-cost, likely unlicensed handyman. Wang can hear, but he can’t speak. He does seem to understand both Mandarin Chinese and English.

The journalist was investigating a child human trafficking ring in some unspecified city in Southeast Asia. Children from lower income families have been vanishing, but the police seem ineffective in their investigations. They may not even be investigating at all.

 

Of course, this means that Rainy will be kidnapped and Wang will do anything to get his daughter back, including running through broken glass. How does the journalist fit in? There also seems to be another person, Navin (Indonesian actor Joe Taslim)  interested in learning more and possibly buying some of the girls from the black leather cowboy hat wearing Mr. Song (Sahajak Boonthanakit). Watch out thought for Ho (Brian Le). 

Otherwise, without giving out spoilers I can tell you:

• Journalists should learn a foreign language and martial arts and wear sturdy pants.
• A ball peen hammer is handier than a sledge hammer in a fight.
• A guy brings a bow and arrows to a gun fight.
• You’ll have another reason to fear ice.
• There’s a Clark Kent moment when you’ll meet the real psycho villain.
• Mirai (未来)　is ironic.
• And the distinctive knife is a kukri (or khukuri) which is the national weapon of Nepal and often associated with Gurkha warriors.

Most of this is revealed in the trailer.

According to the production notes, Xie Miao was a wushu champion in China as a child. He starred opposite Jet Li in “New Legend of Shaolin” and “My Father Is a Hero,” playing Li’s son in both films. Xie Miao, 42, is 5 feet and 7 inches but packs a powerful presence. He’s taller than another child star feeling a resurge in his acting career, Ke Huy Quan. Once Xie Miao’s Wang realizes his daughter is kidnapped, Xie Miao’s eyes burn with an eternal love and hate. You know he’s not going to give up, even if shards of broken glass tear up his feet.

As his sudden ally, Taslim is, as his three seasons on “Warrior” proved, more than up to the challenge of director Kenji Tanigaki’s fight choreography, and the beautiful cinematography by Meteor Cheung.

Since “Warrior,” it’s disappointing that more of the principal actors from that show haven’t been visible in major Hollywood films and TV series. One major disappointment is the new Star Trek series, “Star Trek : Starfleet Academy,” that although based in San Francisco just like “Warrior,” didn’t make any of its principals East or Southeast Asian. Conversely, another TV project diverged from the film series which focused on White people in Asia (Bryan Cranston and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Japan and then Millie Bobby Brown in China) and focused on Japanese actors in its TV series, “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” with (Anna Sawai, Red Watabe and Mari Yamamoto) to make the crossover from Asia to San Francisco make more sense.

According to the IMDb, the film is in Mandarin, English and Thai. I only speak two of those three languages and can vouch for those two. Mak Tin-shu, Lei Zhilong, Shum Kwan-sin and Frank Hui worked on the screenplay. The dialogue isn’t particularly clever and the English dubbing is jarring. This isn’t a movie where you should expect snappy dialogue and I don’t think any of the lines in English will become iconic, but there are some visual moments that will make you cry out in horror and others that will make you laugh.

Here’s a little note on the Chinese from one who barely speaks it any more. The Chinese name actually means the opposite of “rainy.” The first character does mean rain, but the second character means “to clear up.” So her name means “rain clears up.” Wang means “king” while “Wei” means “great” or “big.” Wang Wei (王维 Wáng wéi) is also the name of a Tang dynasty poet, musician and painter. 

The title literally means “fire covers eyes” but apparently is it a phrase that means “blinded by rage” or “acting out of intense rage.” The phrase of often used in Hong Kong and the Guangdong regions as an explanation for someone making a rash decision.

“The Furious” had its world premiere at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival on 6 September 2025. It will be released in the US on 12 June 2026.