Sitges 2025: Kenji Tanigaki’s ‘The Furious’ Has the Best Action of 2025
by Alex Billington
October 12, 2025
Holy hell – Wang Wei is coming and nothing will stop him! Let me just say it right up front: The Furious is the best action movie of 2025, hands down. Nothing is going to top this. While there are plenty of other great action movies this year, none of them have the fight scenes that this movie does, none of them are this level of full-on, go-totally-wild awesome. Made by Japanese action filmmaker Kenji Tanigaki, The Furious premiered at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival in their prestigious Midnight Madness section, then played at Busan, Beyond Fest, and now at the Sitges Film Festival – which is where I caught up with it. And OMFG it totally rocks. This movie is The Raid 2 of the 2020s. Another instant action classic. There’s no question about it, this movie is up there with those two Indonesian action classics (both made by Gareth Evans). Two dudes take on an ENTIRE child trafficking empire on their own!! The Everything Everywhere All at Once stunts / fight team delivers the BEST sprawling, mind-blowing fight scenes since The Raid 2 in 2014. Yes, really, nothing has been this incredible since then. It totally blew away and now I can’t stop talking about it.
The Furious (火遮眼) is a Hong Kong / Chinese action movie made by action director Kenji Tanigaki, from a screenplay written by Mak Tin-shu. It was filmed in Bangkok, Thailand and took three months to shoot. The international mix of production countries, spoken languages, and locations is part of the fun – the movie isn’t actually set in a specific country or specific city because it doesn’t matter. It seems like Hong Kong at first, then becomes Indonesia or Thailand, or somewhere in Southeast Asia, but the news segments in the movie also don’t even specify a location. Not important anyway. It’s a story of two good guys fighting endless bad guys trying to save kids. It’s very similar to The Raid (or The Raid 2) with a premise following entirely independent unstoppable guys bringing down violent crime syndicates by fighting everyone. I don’t even care if the plot is kinda cliche the filmmaking pulls it all together in such a full-on, fist pump, stand up and cheer way with some of the best action ever filmed. The cast features Chinese actor Mo Tse as Wang Wei, a worker whose daughter is kidnapped; Indonesian actor Joe Taslim (of The Raid) as an activist journalist; Indonesian actor Yayan Ruhian (also from The Raid movies) as a bad guy; Thai actress Jeeja Yanin; and American stuntman / martial arts actor Brian Le as one of the henchman. A hell of a stellar cast to watch.
It’s exhilarating to watch the evolution of action cinema and be a part of it as a rabid viewer. I was there at the world premiere of The Raid at TIFF 2011 (my original review). I was there at the world premiere of The Raid 2 at Sundance 2014 (my original review). Now I am honestly overjoyed to also witness this next great step forward in innovative, unforgettable action filmmaking. I am so glad I got to experience this sitting in a packed cinema at a film festival. The Sitges audience and I collectively *lost our shit* during this about 20 times. It’s all so badass!! Full on cheering so many times for scenes that truly deserve this much exuberance. It punches right through the hype as THE best action movie of 2025. As entertaining as the John Wick franchise is, as awesome as it is watching 87North put together stunts in Hollywood movies, as fun as it is seeing Tom Cruise pull off death-defying stunts, none of that comes close to the jaw-dropping action in this movie. There’s a fight where a ladder becomes involved and it took me back to the early days of Jackie Chan pulling off seminal stunts like this. The Furious set a whole new precedent for modern filmmaking, and I’m sure many will try to copy this movie from now on. It’s the energetic combo of the Everything Everywhere fighting team with a batch of skilled action actors with Tanigaki’s refined direction all in perfect harmony.
The only real criticisms anyone can hurl at this movie deal with the plot itself. It’s a big trend nowadays with the world leaning into conservatism to make movies centered around child trafficking and the “good” people trying to stop the bad ones and save all of the children. This is mostly a campy storytelling gimmick and so exceptionally inaccurate compared to real world trafficking (and how to actually stop it) but audiences love cheering for the right people as part of feel good cinema. The Furious leaps fully into this trend with one of the most blatant “save the kids!” plots of the 2020s, but it doesn’t matter, because this time it fully succeeds in being a heroic, inspiring story – of these two guys kicking & punching & slashing the shit out of the bad guy criminals. They flip this plot into something that actually has meaning, where the fights actually have real stakes. It’s pure action cinema magic. Brian Le is the MVP – my audience was laughing & cheering for him he’s so delightfully fun to watch in this even though he’s one of the bad guys. But that’s the glory of the best action movies. Everyone is essential, everyone gives it their all, everyone makes every last punch count.
Alex’s Sitges 2025 Rating: 9.8 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
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