5 reasons you might like The Furious (2026)
I am Jason Kleeberg, this is Force Five, and here are five spoiler free reasons you might like The Furious, and if you’re an action fan, go and see this in a theater right now. Check your listings, buy a ticket and go see this because it is the action film of 2026. If that didn’t excite you, I bet my number 1 reason will.
Reason number 5, if you’re a fan of The Raid, The Raid 2, The Night Comes for Us, or any of the other Indonesian action films of the last decade, get this on your radar right now. The DNA in style is pretty clear but there’s also some DNA regarding the cast. Joe Taslim, who played Jaka in The Raid plays Navin, one of the leads who is going up against a human trafficking organization to find his wife, a reporter who went missing while investigating the people responsible. Yayan Ruhian is also here, he’s been in a lot of really great fight films but he’ll always be Mad Dog to me is in the movie as well, he’s the right hand man of the main villain and uses a weapon that we’ve all seen before but I have never seen used like he does in this film.
Reason number 4, two actors who I wasn’t super familiar with blew me away with their martial arts skill. The first is Miao Xie, who’s had a very long career in action and fantasy movies in China. I’ve only seen him in the Eye for an Eye films and he was incredible as a mute father mowing people down to try to find his kid who has been kidnapped by the traffickers. However, the biggest surprise for me was Brian Le, who I had last seen in the great 2020 film Paper Tigers. He’s part of the Martial Club Stunt Team who did the stunt work for Shang Chi and Everything Everywhere All At Once, and he’s a big, bulky, muscular dude who moves like no one you’ve ever seen before. He’s like a balanced battering ram, like a circus sea lion with incredible quickness and agility. He’s got a few fight scenes in this movie and as good as everyone is, this dude stole the show for me.
Okay, let’s get into some tactical stuff, the fight scenes. There are two main things that really grabbed me in regards to the fights.
Reason number 3, the use of momentum and balance in this choreography is incredible. It’s hard to explain, but people slip, they trip, they stumble in real fight scenes and you rarely see that in movies. In this one, it feels more real because everyone is stumbling all the time and they use that momentum to their advantage. Multiple times you’ll see characters toss someone aside who’s hurtling for them or using other people, friends and foes alike for leverage. At times it reminded me of early Steven Seagal fights where he would use people’s momentum to toss them aside. It feels scrappy, purposely sloppy and almost like a different kind of fighting all together.
And speaking of…
Reason number 2, The Furious solves an ages long problem I’ve had with fight films. In a lot of fight scenes, you’ll have 8 or 9 guys circling the protagonist but filmmakers have a tough time making that work because one guy would be murdered by that many people, so they’ll have one guy attack and the other guys will simply wait, twiddling their thumbs until it’s their turn to be dispatched. In this film, those 8 or 9 guys attack at once, and seeing the protagonists get out of the situations and fight their way through those people is insane at times.
Reason number 1…I try not to be hyperbolic in anything but social media thumbnails, but I kid you not - the final fight scene in this film may be the best fight scene I’ve ever seen. After seeing it once, it’s definitely in my top 5. It continuously ramps up, and the action going on at the same time and intertwining the characters is so intricate that I cannot imagine the planning that went into it. There are really distinct fighting styles that are cool to see mixed, but then they add in weapons, another challenger, and even arrows that keep the momentum going. It ends in a really satisfying way as well and I cannot wait to see this fight scene again as soon as this one goes wide.
If you’re an action fan, see this film. Do not hesitate. If you’ve already seen The Furious, what did you think of it? And what’s your favorite fight scene of all time? Let me know in the comments below or email me at forcefivepodcast at gmail dot com.
