With the arrival of Johnny Tri Nguyen and Dustin Nguyen back in 2007, Vietnamese movies are starting to become a major player in action movies as of late and Furie is no exception.
Veronica Ngo (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Bright) plays a mother Hai Phuong who’s daughter is kidnapped so like Paradox and following the Liam Neeson Taken route we have a parent trying to find their kidnapped child before it’s too late. Only thing is this time Phuong happens to be a martial arts expert-taught by her father, a former gangster and currently a debt collector who has no issues with beating down people that can’t pay.
The movie starts with Phuong going about her daily routine of debt collecting. We see people begging for time to pay and her showing little remorse before giving them a beating and leaving them bloodied and bruised in the background as she counts the money. Obviously not proud of her line of work she’s doing it to get by as she works for someone who pays her to collect the debts. If she doesn’t collect all the debts, she doesn’t get paid in full so she has no choice really.
Her daughter who’s at schools is also not proud of her mums’ line of work and gets bullied for it. Not really understanding that she does it all for her. Getting pregnant is what made Phuong leave her past life behind and move away from the big city to a small village.
After visiting the local market to reluctantly pawn some very sentimental jewelry her daughter gets accused of stealing a wallet. All the villagers jump to conclusions of the like mother like daughter concept, Phuong is eager to stop the gossip and discipline her daughter in front of the crowd not believing her own daughter who said she didn’t steal the wallet and found it. This prompts her daughter to run off and you guessed it, get kidnapped by child traffickers. Phuong upon looking for her daughter see’s the men dragging her off and springs into action. This is where things start to kick off.
With henchman to dispatch that seem to come out the woodwork Phuong desperately tries to catch the kidnappers who are escaping on a boat while she chases on a stolen bike.
She’s too late as they board a coach which is headed for Saigon so she also heads there. Instead of contacting the police straight away, she contacts her old workplace to find out more who aren’t really very helpful. Eventually, she contacts the police and while being interviewed manages to obtain the files of the current suspects for child abductions. So now she has her targets.
Many fights take place as Phuong is on an unstoppable path and won’t let anyone stand in her way. Of course, we have a bad arse antagonist in newcomer Thanh Soi who looks hard as nails. There’s quite a good analogy in the movie which someone says. Hunters who hunt tigers mainly hunt males. Because females who have cubs are far more dangerous and aggressive and if a hunter were to steal or kill the cubs the mother will never forget and will hunt them to the ends of the earth. It perfectly describes Phuong and her determination. Veronica Ngo acts her chops off with some generally emotional moments that had me welling up a little.
I originally caught the trailer of Furie for my most anticipated martial arts movies of 2019 list by mistake as I hadn’t heard of it but thought it looked awesome and am glad, I did as it’s one of the best action movies I’ve seen in a while. Hollywood should take note of how a bad arse female protagonist needs to be portrayed. We don’t need constant stern expressions, dressed in leather, pulling of ridiculous unrealistic moves and being unbeatable. We need Veronica Ngo as Hai Phuong who struggles every step of the way when it would be so easy to give up and let the police handle it. And she does take quite the beating along the way but we just know whoever she comes up against she’s will eventually overcome until she reaches her goal alive or almost dead. Furie is on Netflix now so what are you waiting for?
Rating: 4/5 belts
