Parents' Guide to The Furious

An international production in the vein of The Raid films, this action movie doesn't have a lot of depth, but what it does have is ever-escalating, jaw-dropping martial arts. Directed by Kenji Tanigaki, The Furious mostly gets by on the charisma of its two leading men. Xie Miao has starred in films alongside Jet Li and Chow Yun-fat, while Joe Taslim is probably best known for his roles in Fast & Furious 6 and the Mortal Kombat movies. Their characters' mutual respect and male friendship-under-fire recalls similar relationships in John Woo's The Killer and Hard-Boiled. Their unspoken communication in battle is almost instinctive (and it makes sense, since Wang Wei doesn't speak).

The martial arts practiced here are impressive and awe-inspiring; Chinese wushu, kung fuk, taekwondo, judo, pencak silat, and karate are all represented, and as multiple practitioners battle, the fighters use the bodies of other fighters both as weapons and as shields. Anything handy can be a weapon, from a metal cabinet to a bicycle. There are also a plethora of ways in which characters move to avoid being slammed by a sledgehammer or sliced with a huge blade. Action sequences are expertly filmed, with takes long enough for the eye to register what's going on and with the fighters' costumes helping viewers tell them apart amid the blur of action. As for the story, the villainous plot about child trafficking in The Furious is disturbingly relevant, but it's the movie's father-daughter story that's poignantly timeless.