Director Kenji Tanigaki’s new film, The Furious, is a martial arts extravaganza with a strong sense of humor and heart. With a cast which includes Joe Taslim, Miao Xie, Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga, and Yayan Ruhian, and a pace as intense as the film’s title would imply, it was the talk of social media during Fantastic Fest, with everyone who saw it imploring anyone who could to check it out themselves.

In The Furious, a handyman’s daughter is abducted by a child trafficking ring, causing the father (Miao Xie) to set out on a rampage, confronting both the corrupt police and the criminals, determined to rescue his kidnapped daughter. In the process, he encounters Navin (Joe Taslim), a journalist trying to solve his wife’s disappearance. Together, the two unleash their formidable combat skills, fighting their way through dangerous obstacles to unravel crucial clues and successfully rescue Rainy and a group of innocent children. 

The Furious is an intense feast for the eyes, and we were excited to get on Zoom and speak with director Tanigaki all about it.

STARBURST: Was it important for you when making The Furious to have your women characters be as strong as the men?

Kenji Tanigaki: Yeah, I think so, because I love that some weak people fight back. It’s not only the woman – our leading actor, who played the Chinese mute, because in his foreign country, he doesn’t wanna make noise anything but once the daughter kidnapped, he is fight back.

I love these kind of things because this is a good format for the action movie. Even Bruce Lee is the same. The people look down on him, but at some point he is coming back and fight back and I love this kind of things, whether is a man or a woman.

As you very clearly mentioned there, our lead characters in this movie do not have an easy time of it. How do you make a movie where your leads get regularly beaten down, but you still want to root for them?

Nowadays I feel, I believe many owners wanna see the actors struggling. So, this is the format of the action movie because they must struggle and the at the end, they will fight back. I hope every action scene looks different, so yeah – get beaten and coming back, get beaten, coming back. I don’t wanna do the same action or the same set pieces, same kind of action. Everything looks different.

It’s not the same scene time after time. You have a fight in the back of a truck, you have a fight in an ice factory. How did you come up with these wildly original set pieces?

When we start to make the story, at the same time, we consider what kind of set pieces will be good introduction. So, first thing, I wanna emphasize running, because running not every people get beaten by the hammer, right? But everybody have the experience to running running in hot, hot, hot and humid situation and maybe everybody can feel running by barefoot. It’s very, very painful. So first thing, I rather the running because running is most primitive movement by human being. That’s very important for me, so start from this.

In the nightclub, I wanna use a hammer. Another set piece is in ice factory, because as a movie fan, I’m a little bit tired about watching the fight in the factory. Many, many movie like that. But ice factory looks different and we shop in Thailand, Bangkok, so that’s a good homage for The Big Boss – Bruce Lee – ’cause in The Big Boss, they also use an ice factory. So homage-wise and the set pieces-wise, as ice factories, we can use a lot of different element.

So ice factory and the ghetto. We use a lot of building or other things that, that’s okay. In the ending fight, I need five guys fight. Five guys from the three different parties. That’s, I think, an interesting situation as, at the beginning, we just think that, “Okay, two bad guys, two good guys fight together,” but I wanna add one more dramatic changing moment. I love this fight. And after this, bicycle fight.

The bicycle fight was absolutely beyond, and that’s sort of a real hallmark of The Furious is that – with the exception of when our mute character pulls the hammer out of his jacket – they’re not bringing weapons with them to these fights. They are picking things up and using them in the moment. I feel like you’re showing how clever these guys are. Was that part of the intent – to just show how adaptable they were?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because they’re using DIY so that the most familiar tools so that when he choose some weapons or that hammer, it very natural things.

And Navin’s the judo guy, so judo guy doesn’t have to bring anything. I think luckily they have their their martial arts background. And Wang Wei is a kung fu, so their fighting style, I can mix up. I just use their strong point and they use their strong point to choreograph. It’s very good and help us to make make a choreograph.

For example: at the security room is first time Wang Wei and Navin fight. The concept is how judo guy attack the kung fu guy because judo guy try to grab their sleeve, right? And kung fu need some distance, so the concept is judo guy try to get your sleeve and kung fu guy’s, “Ah, I don’t let you grab that.”

So, first half, we just expressed how they fight and second half – “Okay. Jacket off. You try to grab my sleeve? Jacket off,” and then judo guy is very tired. I don’t think every audience can understand these kind of things. Maybe some audience, all fight is fast movement. That’s fine. I think it’s fine. But some audience knows all that this non-verbal communication through the choreograph means a lot. Sometimes, everything that use a dialogue to explain is, to me, really too much.

For example, Chinese kung fu guy: how he won the main villain, he use a judo rule. Kung fu guy use a judo throw because of their friendship and maybe this Chinese guy learn from him. Or if we talk some cliche, maybe however Navin died, he helped the wrong way. Again, not every audience knows, but it, to me, it’s a richness to soothe. It tells something through the choreograph.

You have cast in a smaller role, but a very effective one, Yayan Ruhian. When he shows up in an action movie, people know that bad things are going to happen to your characters. Was part of the appeal of casting him in that you see his face and everyone immediately flashes back to Mad Dog from The Raid?

Absolutely right, because yeah – at least not good things happen, right? So but this time yeah, you’re right because his screen time is a bit short and I, I don’t have any good space to explain his background. We need a good introduction for him, so I wanna bring the archery. And let him, let him bring the sword because a lot of his movies, he using his arm and leg to fight this time actually and the knife is good for him because his screen time is shorter. I need you to know right away how strong he is.

THE FURIOUS had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.