Everybody’s fighting everybody in this stuntman jamboree as though the emergency room’s right next door.
A mute Chinese handyman, Wang Wei (Xie Miao who played Jet Li’s kickbutt small son way back in 1995’s My Father is a Hero), sees his young daughter, Rainy (Yang Enyou), abducted in broad daylight by a human-trafficking gang in “somewhere in Southeast Asia”. Obviously Thailand.
He chases relentlessly like the Terminator in coolie slippers down the streets but fails to rescue her after a pulsating fight with thugs onboard a speeding garbage truck that would bankrupt an entire insurance company.
On the way to save her, he teams up with Navin (judoka Joe Taslim from Indonesia’s still-talked-about 2011’s The Raid). The latter is looking for his reporter-wife, Matia (Jija Yanin, herself the kickass babe from 2008 Thai actioner, Chocolate). In an opening cameo, she goes missing after investigating kids snatched from poor neighbourhoods.
Our Dynamic Duo provokes-punches-plasters-pulverises an entire population of baddies, led by a rich, sneering psycho, Paklung (Alice in Borderland‘s Joey Iwanaga). His unstoppable even-more-psychotic henchman, Tak (Yayan Ruhian, the legendary Mad Dog from The Raid), keeps shooting arrows really up close as if he’s running an archery-themed morgue.
Man, this guy is so cold attacking a police station even with someone’s severed arm still grabbing his leg. Insane.
People whack each other in all kinds of ways, styles, methods and madness. Including a berserk baldie (Brian Le from Everything Everywhere All at Once) who smashes literally everyone as the poster boy for head trauma. Wang breaks a metal mallet right on his chrome dome.
To complete this crazy Fight Club of Asia, this whole squabble is directed by Kenji Tanigaki, Hong Kong-based Japanese action director of Rurouni Kenshin and Sakra. Making you wonder — where the hell are Singapore’s siao lang (mad folks) in this merry open house?
And oh, virtually everybody, even the local cops, speak American like it’s a B-grade knock-off from the 1970s. A clean female cop (Manatsanun Phanlerdwongsakul) is modern-day relevant. Her ludicrously corrupt boss looks like an escapee from an outdated hick town.
Which suits no-speaka-English PRC Xie Miao’s mute dude just fine. Although he writes urgent notes in quite perfect ang moh. Amazing.
FYI. A similarly-named Malaysian boxing flick, The Furious: Pertaruhan Maruah, is out in our cinemas too. So this is truly a season to be furious.