Brawl Out Warfare: The Furious (2026) Review

Director: Kenji Tanigaki

Notable Cast: Xie Miao, Joe Taslim, Yang Enyou, Yayan Ruhian, Jeeja Yanin, Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga

 

I love martial arts films. Down to the point that I might call it a core part of my personality. When there’s a new martial arts action film coming down the pipeline, you can guarantee that I’ll be there in my best suit, waiting in line to partake. When there’s a new one that starts to garner a lot of buzz in the film community, I almost feel surprised. It’s not often that a martial arts movie makes waves, and too often I feel like some of the best in the genre are tossed off by the greater film community as just low-brow entertainment at best. Yet, here we are in 2026, and critics and audiences seem to be, surprisingly, in love with a new martial arts film. 

 

Of course, the film I’m referring to is The Furious, the latest international martial arts stunner that has found some success theatrically even in the US. Directed by action choreographer and stuntman extraordinaire Kenji Tanigaki, The Furious blends classic Hong Kong action cinema characters and plotting with an international mix of star power and martial arts stunt powerhouses, and the results are as violent and driven as one might expect. Its success overall with audiences, particularly in the West, is because most audiences understand the language it's using - good guys beating the ever-living shit out of bad guys, and it does it with immense style and a raucous amount of diversity in its endless fights. 

 

Triple Threat (2019)

Director: Jesse V. Johnson

Notable Cast: Tony Jaa, Scott Adkins, Iko Uwais, Tiger Chen, Michael Jai White, Celina Jade, Michael Bisping, Jeeja Yanin, Ron Smoorenburg, Monica Mok

Hype can be a challenging thing for a film. As soon as Triple Threat was announced, the hype was already at maximum. Between the impressive ensemble cast, the director, and the general tone that immediately came with it, Triple Threat was immediately an action fan dream – particularly from the martial arts variety. Even with all of that riding along for the journey, including how long the film was taking to get a release in the US, Triple Threat is a massive action cinema treat. It looks hype in the eye, says “talk, talk, talk” and then knocks its lights out. The fact remains, even with some smaller issues that arise here and there, that Triple Threat delivers on its promises. It has bigger than life characters, a wildly efficient plot, and enough action to shake the foundations of cinema. It’s a film that certainly gears what it does towards its distinctive audience, for better or worse, but for someone like myself I could not have had a better time watching the film.

Hard Target 2 (2016)

Director: Roel Reine

Notable Cast: Scott Adkins, Robert Knepper, Rhona Mitra, Temuera Morrison, Ann Truong, Adam Saunders, Jamie Timony, Peter Hardy, Sean Keenan, Troy Honeysett, Amarin Cholvibul, and a cameo by Jeeja Yanin

“You have something that belongs to me.”
“A false sense of superiority?”

The mining of nostalgic franchises is not new to the realm of straight to home video. While people seem up in arms about theatrical movies rebooting/remaking/franchising classic series, this has been a very popular thing to do in the home video market for decades. So is it all that surprising that a sequel to Hard Target would be hitting store shelves, VOD, and Netflix 23 years after the original hit theaters? I, for one, am not inherently against the franchising of older films for a newer generation as long as the film works. In the case of Hard Target 2, it does. It works much better than I could have ever hoped for a straight to home video actioner. While the film is hardly perfect and certainly has that low budget ‘do what you can with what you have’ kind of tone to it at times, it’s such a focused and entertaining film that it hardly misses a beat to give action fans a bit of what they want out of a film like Hard Target 2.