Featured Blu-ray and DVD Review: Furie

July 17, 2019

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Furie

Furie is a Vietnamese martial arts movie that many compared to Taken. The film earned stellar reviews and did incredibly well in limited release for a foreign-language film. Did it deserve this success? Or did it get lucky?

The Movie

Hai Phuong is on the job. She’s a debt collector for a rather nasty loan shark, who mocks her for being stuck in this dead end village after living in the big city. She is also insulted by merchants at the local market for being a single parent and a debt collector, although they do it behind her back. Her daughter, Mai, is bullied for the same reasons and blames her mother’s job for making her a target. Their home life isn’t great either, as money is tight. Hai can only afford pig intestines for dinner. (I assume from the context pig intestines are peasants food in Vietnam, although I think they are considered a delicacy in some parts of Asia, as well as in France.) Dinner is ruined, first by Hai’s lack of cooking skills (Mai is already better than she is at cooking.) and then by a man looking for revenge for his brother, who is one of the men Hai collects debts from. Mai hates what her mother does for a living and is even planning to work with a neighbor to create a fish farm, so her mother doesn’t have to work anymore collecting debts.

The next day, Hai is trying to sell her earrings, the last memento she has of her old life in the city. She’s looking to raise the money Mai said it would cost to start the fish farm. However, while Hai is negotiating with the prawn broker for the money, Mai is accused of stealing a wallet. When Hai sides with the crowd and against her own daughter, Mai runs off, only to almost immediately find out Mai was telling the truth and she did just find the wallet on the ground. This would have just been a bad day in what seems like a string of bad days for this family, but when Mai goes to the river to mope, she’s grabbed by some thugs. Hai hears her screams and runs to help, but she is intercepted and in the short time it takes for her to defeat them, Mai is kidnapped.

For the next hour and a bit, we watch Hai beat her way through waves of thugs trying to rescue her daughter, while learning more about her past.

Furie

Furie spends the first 20 minutes making sure the audience actually cares about Hai and Mai. That doesn’t sound like something that should be praiseworthy, but a surprising number of filmmakers forget this vital step, especially in action films. They either assume audiences will instinctively cheer for whoever the camera is pointing at the most, or they assume audiences are only there for the action and characters don’t matter. Both of these assumptions are wrong. It takes effort to make characters engaging, doubly so for kids, and this film manages to do it well.

Having characters that we care about makes the action a whole lot more impressive, because there are emotional stakes. However, having a good fight choreographer and skilled actors / stuntpeople are also key. Veronica Ngo is absolutely essential to the film’s success in this regard as well. She can handle the visceral fighting scenes like she was a veteran in the genre. Additionally, while the film had a low budget compared to Hollywood, the director was able to make the most out of his budget, adding a sense of style that many action films lack. Granted, skill isn’t always enough to overcome budgetary concerns, so if you are hoping for another John Wick, then it is best to keep your expectations in check. If you go in expecting a low-budget action film, then you will be blown away by the quality.

The Extras

The only extras are a quartet of behind-the-scenes featurettes. They average just 3 minutes in length, so it is not a lot, but it is better than many foreign-language imports get.

The Verdict

Furie reportedly broke the box office record for a Vietnam film and it deserves this success. The DVD / Blu-ray isn’t loaded with extras, but it has more than enough to be worth picking up.

Filed under: Video Review, Hai Phuong, John Wick