Review - The Furious

Starring Xie Miao, Joe Taslim, Yang Enyou, Joey Iwanaga. Screenplay by Mak Tin Shu, Lei Zhilong, Shum Kwan Sin and Frank Hui. Directed by Kenji Tanigaki. Rated R. 113 minutes. In theaters.

Not to be confused with one of Vin Diesel’s “FAMBLY” exercises in automotive excess, director Kenji Tanigaki’s limb-shattering kung fu extravaganza has been the big buzz in film geek circles ever since it premiered in the Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness section last fall. “The Furious” was the closing night attraction of this past spring’s Boston Underground Film Festival, and it’s easy to see why the film has been bringing down the house at genre fests. It’s a celluloid battering ram of kicking, punching and bodies flying across the screen in an exquisitely choreographed orgy of bone-crunching, blood-drenched glory. The movie was made to be watched late at night, in a packed house with a rowdy crowd of like-minded, preferably inebriated individuals cheering on the next snapped femur or gouged eyeball.

Done no favors by nine months of the usual hyperbolic hard sell from the fanboy set, “The Furious” has at last gone into general release and once again we see that what plays like gangbusters after midnight “hits different” at a sparsely attended weekday matinee. There’s not a lot linking together these standout sequences of athletic mayhem. Yet perhaps such minimalism is for the best, as what passes for plot and character development in “The Furious” is really quite poor. Even by martial arts movie standards.