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  "description": "A user's guide to the artists behind the year's hottest action movie",
  "path": "/what-to-watch-after-youve-watched-the-furious/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-14T20:26:53.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.thechinesecinema.com",
  "tags": [
    "Quentin Tarantino",
    "Tanigaki Kenji",
    "Donnie Yen",
    "SPL: Sha Po Long",
    "Wu xia",
    "Big Brother",
    "Raging Fire",
    "Hidden Man",
    "Glass Heart",
    "Enter the Fat Dragon",
    "The Prosecutor",
    "Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In",
    "Cheang",
    "Accident",
    "Limbo",
    "Mad Fate",
    "Wolf Warriors",
    "The Wandering Earth",
    "The Battle at Lake Changjin",
    "Fruit Chan",
    "Invincible Dragon",
    "Master Z: Ip Man Legacy",
    "Blades of the Guardians",
    "Customs Frontline",
    "iQIYI",
    "Chris Huo",
    "Qin Pengfei",
    "The Sixth Robber",
    "Black Storm",
    "Drunken Prodigy",
    "Blade of Fury",
    "The Bodyguard",
    "King of Snipers",
    "Shell Girl",
    "Mutant Ghost Wargirl",
    "Wild Agent 2, Queen of Triads",
    "The Taking of Tiger Mountain",
    "The Thousand Faces of Dunjia",
    "Fight Against Evil",
    "Eye for an Eye",
    "Second Life",
    "Man of Tai Chi",
    "Skylines",
    "Yakuza Apocalypse",
    "Lone Samurai",
    "The Shadow Strays",
    "Sonomura Kensuke",
    "Baby",
    "Assassins",
    "films",
    "TV series",
    "The Notebook",
    "Sakamoto Yugo",
    "Yellow Dragon’s Village",
    "Nemurubaka",
    "Ghost Killer",
    "My Beloved Bodyguard",
    "Three",
    "Chasing Dream",
    "Detective vs. Sleuths",
    "Warriors of Future",
    "Possession Street",
    "Operation Red Sea",
    "The Rescue",
    "The Paper Tigers"
  ],
  "textContent": "The most-anticipated martial arts film in years has finally dropped in North America, almost a year after it premiered last year at the Toronto Film Festival. I haven’t seen _The Furious_ yet. I tried to cover it during its festival run, but screeners weren’t forthcoming. No screeners for its theatrical release either: for the first time that I can recall, an action movie of this sort opted for in-person press screenings rather than digital screeners. This is likely what is responsible for its high profile and the hype surrounding its release: amazing the amount of press you get if you show critics a movie in a theatre.\n\nAccompanying such hype, where all of a sudden mainstream critics who couldn’t be bothered to watch an East Asian action movie otherwise are suddenly gushing about a new release, always presents a dilemma for long-time genre fans. I’m just old enough to remember when liking popular things wasn’t cool, so I’m always conflicted when something from my little world breaks containment. There’s always the hope though that a breakthrough hit will widen the market for my kinds of films, that people like the choreographers and stars of _The Furious_ will become mainstream and be given greater and greater opportunities to show and capitalize on their many talents. Or that the North American audiences and distributors will finally become less provincial and begin according the kinds of movies I like the respect they offer to middling European festival fare.\n\nrrr\n\nOf course, the last time an action movie received the amount of hype _The Furious_ has gotten was SS Rajamouli’s _RRR_. Not in _RRR_ ’s initial release, to be sure, that played in the segregated corners of AMC and Cinemark multiplexes devoted to Asian cinema–the South Asian, Chinese, Korean, Filipino mainstream films that take up a handful of screens every week and yet receive no mainstream critical attention. _RRR_ ’s popularity came later, after a handful of enterprising critics, programmers, and theatres started playing it in one-offs and late night screenings, building it up over the course of a year into a bona fide Oscar nominee. Did _RRR_ ’s breakthrough lead to a growing embrace of South Asian action cinema by mainstream audiences? Have scores of theatres followed suit by heavily promoting the thrills of movies like _Ponniyin Selvan, Jigarthanda DoubleX, Jawan_ , or even, to jump genres, _Rocky aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani_ , all of which come out in 2023, a year after _RRR_ , and played American multiplexes? No, of course not. After _RRR_ got its Oscar, mainstream American critics went right back to ignoring South Asian cinema like they always have.\n\nrocky aur rani\n\nNor did _RRR_ ’s success lead to a widespread reckoning with Rajamouli’s earlier work, even though, in my opinion at least, his preceding films, the two-part _Baahubali_ and the karmic revenge saga _Eega_ are significantly better movies, even without getting into the, let’s say complicated, politics of _RRR_ itself, issues around which most American critics (myself not excepted) are almost totally ignorant. About the only tangible result I’ve seen of _RRR_ ’s success over here was a rerelease of _Baahubali_ after it had been recut into a single 225 minute version (100 minutes shorter than the running time of original two films together). But, I don’t know why anyone would bother with that, I certainly didn’t. Just watch the two movies, they’re great.\n\nAnyway, all of this is to say that the people behind _The Furious_ , the actors, director, choreographer, etc have put together a tremendous body of work over the last few decades. And it’s great that they’re finally seeing some success in the West. But I desperately hope this isn’t the last time their work sees American (theatrical) screens, or the only time the critical establishment bothers to check out their movies. To that end, I’d like to suggest some Subjects for Further Research for those who are discovering these artists for the first time. Everyone has to start somewhere: I remember with humility that I’d never heard of Jackie Chan or Wong Kar-wai until Quentin Tarantino told me about them.\n\nspl: sha po lang\n\nDirector Tanigaki Kenji is one of the more accomplished fight choreographers of the 21st century. Along with his longtime collaborator and star Donnie Yen, he was instrumental in integrating MMA-style fighting into the Hong Kong action tradition, melding it with the opera acrobatics of choreographers like Sammo Hung and Yuen Woo-ping and the wushu athleticism of stars like Yen and Jet Li. Yen’s mid-2000s SPL: Sha Po Long and _Flash Point_ are the keys films in this transition, and Tanigaki served as stunt coordinator for both. He filled the same role on a trio of Yen period films (_Bodyguards and Assassins, Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chan Zhen_ , and Wu xia) before spending most of the last fifteen years hopping back and forth between Hong Kong (Yen’s very bad Big Brother and Benny Chan’s solid Raging Fire), China (Jiang Wen’s excellent Hidden Man, Gordon Chan’s decent _God of War_), and Japan (where he choreographed three _Rurouni Kenshin_ films (featuring Satoh Takeru from Glass Heart). In recent years, he’s renewed his collaboration with Yen, directing him in the awful Enter the Fat Dragon, and choreographing him in the forgettable _Sakra_ and The Prosecutor.\n\nlimbo\n\nTanigaki’s best work in recent years came in 2024 with the choreography for Soi Cheang’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In. Cheang is one of the great Hong Kong directors to come to prominence in the 21st century, working in a variety of genres to keep the spirit of Hong Kong’s cinema alive in the face of the all-consuming and controlling size of the Mainland market and censorship system. Cheang began making low budget horror and action movies around the turn of the century, stuff like _New Blood, Death Curse_ , and _Love Battlefield_. In 2009 he hooked up with Johnnie To’s Milkyway Image company to make first Accident and then _Motorway_ (2011), which helped establish him in the mainstream. From there he embarked on an ambitious, big budget series of _Monkey King_ films, the first of which stars Donnie Yen and isn’t very good, though the next two get a lot better. Lately he’s back to his independent ways, with the grimy noir Limbo, the Milkyway Image film Mad Fate and _Twilight of the Warriors_.\n\nspl 2: a time for conseqeunces\n\nCheang’s best film is arguably _SPL 2: A Time for Consequences_ , an unrelated sequel to the Yen/Tanigaki movie choreographed by former Jackie Chan collaborator Nicky Li Chung-chi. _SPL 2_ starred Wu Jing, who was in the midst of a run of action films that would make him the biggest action star in China (Wolf Warriors_, Call of Heroes,_ The Wandering Earth_,_ The Battle at Lake Changjin), and Tony Jaa, the muay thai fighter turned underground action legend following the breakthrough of his super-low budget brawler _Ong Bak_ in 2003. Jaa’s follow-up, _The Protector_ , was one of those Asian action films to get a theatrical release in the 2000s, when distributors and bookers were more open than they are today, and is most notable for a very long single-take fight sequence, a novelty at the time that would quickly become a cliché in action cinema. Nearly stealing _SPL2_ in the final three-way fight sequence is Zhang Jin, who had began his career as a stuntman (doubling Zhang Ziyi and Michelle Yeoh in _Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon_) and had from there moved to supporting (_The Grandmaster, Ip Man 3_) and then lead roles in films like Fruit Chan’s Invincible Dragon and Yuen Woo-ping’s Master Z: Ip Man Legacy. He had a small role in this year’s Blades of the Guardians, alongside Wu Jing and Nicholas Tse (_Raging Fire,_ Customs Frontline), but his most recent lead role was in 2025’s iQIYI film _The Old Way_.\n\ninvincible dragon\n\niQIYI is the streaming video service that is the easiest way for American viewers to find the most exciting Chinese-language action cinema being made today. Working quickly and cheaply, directors like Chris Huo and Qin Pengfei have established themselves in a few short years as first-rate fight filmmakers, building around them a new generation of stars in a way that Hong Kong seems increasingly unable to accomplish, stars like Bao Baier (The Sixth Robber, Black Storm) Ashton Chen (Drunken Prodigy_,_ Blade of Fury) Henry Prince Mak (seemingly every movie with a _Sniper_ in it), Yang Xing (The Bodyguard, King of Snipers), MIYA (Shell Girl, Mutant Ghost Wargirl), and Raquel (Wild Agent 2, Queen of Triads). Foremost among these stars is Xie Miao, who like Ashton Chen began his career as a child actor in 1990s Hong Kong martial arts movies, but whose career floundered (small roles in Tsui Hark’s The Taking of Tiger Mountain and The Thousand Faces of Dunjia appear to be highlights) until iQIYI gave him a chance to show his skills. In 2021 he starred with Raquel in _Queen of Triads 2_ , which is probably her best movie, and starred in Fight Against Evil for Qin Pengfei (director) and Yang Bingjia (screenwriter). Qin and Yang’s _Fight Against Evil_ series, along with their concurrent Eye for an Eye films (with Yang directing and Qin choreographing) are the most famous of the iQIYI films in the West, the ones that have come closest to breaking through to the mainstream, though I’d say Chris Huo’s _King of Snipers,_ Second Life, and _The Sixth Robber_ are better. There’s reportedly a third _Eye for an Eye_ film in the works, which will combine Xie’s Blind Swordsman with Ashton Chen’s drunken bounty hunter from _Blade of Fury_. It should be one of the most anticipated films of its year, especially coming off Xie Miao’s starring role in _The Furious_. I guess we’ll see.\n\nfight against evil\n\nStarring with Xie Miao in _The Furious_ are Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian, who starred in the 2011 Indonesia film _The Raid: Redemption_ , probably the last East Asian action film to receive _The Furious_ -level hype. Ruhian, Taslim and their _The Raid_ co-star Iko Uwais have had some middling success around the world in the fifteen years since that film’s breakout: Uwais was in an _Expendables_ movie, Keanu Reeves’s Man of Tai Chi, and _Snake Eyes_ (in which Tanigaki Kenji also served as a fight coordinator and played “Yakuza with Eye Patch”); both Uwais and Ruhian appeared in _The Force Awakens_ , though they weren’t allowed to do anything but run around in the dark, chased by pixels; Taslim appeared in _Fast & Furious, Star Trek_, and _Mortal Kombat_ movies. Ruhian’s probably had the most fun subsequent filmography, appearing in a _John Wick_ movie, a couple Liam O’Donnell Skylines movies, Miike Takashi’s Yakuza Apocalypse, and most recently Josh C. Waller’s excellent Lone Samurai. Uwais and Taslim both starred in Timo Tjahjanto’s brutal _The Night Comes for Us_ in 2018, and Ruhian appeared in Tjahjanto’s The Shadow Strays, one of the best action films in recent years from anywhere in the world, but which disappeared into the ether of a straight-to-Netflix release.\n\nthe shadow strays\n\nOne would think that releasing a film on the one streaming service that every mainstream critic in America subscribes to would be a good way to raise an action film’s profile, but as we’ve seen with _The Furious_ , it takes an in-person press screening for that to happen. That’s the only explanation (the _only_ explanation) I can think of for the establishment’s continued ignorance of the work of _The Furious_ ’s choreographer Sonomura Kensuke. The Baby__ Assassins films and TV series have been widely available in the US for years, the movies streaming on VOD and Amazon and the Hi-Yah!! Channel and available on BluRay thanks to distributor WellGo USA, and the series on HBO Max for the past year or so. Off-beat slacker comedies about the friendship between two young women who are forced to live together and get real jobs as a cover for their real job as killers for hire, the _Baby Assassins_ franchise is one of the absolute peaks of world culture in the 2020s, and Sonomura’s fight choreography, executed brilliantly by star Izawa Saori, is one of the series’ great calling cards. I can’t recommend enough Jonah Jeng’s recent essay on Sonomura in The Notebook—he’s terrific at explaining the nuts-and-bolts of what makes Sonomura’s style so unique and exciting. _Baby Assassins_ is written and directed by Sakamoto Yugo, who aside from these films has made the very clever slasher film Yellow Dragon’s Village and more recently the wonderful slacker musical Nemurubaka. Sonomura himself has directed a fine trio of action films: _Bad City, Hydra_ and, most recently, Ghost Killer with _Baby Assassins_ star Takaishi Akari (also of _Glass Heart_) from a script by Sakamoto.\n\nbaby assassins 2\n\n _The Furious_ ’s scriptwriters have an impressive pedigree as well. There are three credited on the hkmdb. Frank Hui was one of the directors of Milkyway Image's 2016 _Trivisa_ omnibus project and worked with Sammo Hung on his last directorial feature My Beloved Bodyguard. Mak Tin-shu also worked on _Trivisa_ , as a screenwriter, a role he also performed on several subsequent films, including Johnnie To’s Three and Chasing Dream, Wai Ka-fai’s Detective vs. Sleuths, and Louis Koo’s Warriors of Future; his directorial debut, _Dog Day Evening_ , with Michael Ning and Fish Liew, is scheduled to open this week in Hong Kong. Shum Kwan-sin is a credited writer on Soi Cheang’s _Limbo_ and _Twilight of the Warriors_ , along with Jack Lai’s very fine zombie film Possession Street. _The Furious_ ’s score is by Elliot Yeung, who appears to be propaganda titan Dante Lam’s go-to composer (Operation Red Sea_,_ The Rescue_, Battle at Lake Changjin_).\n\nbattle at lake changjin\n\nOkay I’m going to stop there. I’m sure I could go on and on about the people involved with _The Furious_ (hey Brian Le was in the Seattle-based martial arts movie The Paper Tigers!), it really does feel, without having seen it, like the culmination of the last couple of decades of East Asian action filmmaking, pulling from traditions established in Hong Kong and Japan, Indonesia and Thailand, China and America, to create one big bloody whole and dropping it right in among the people hyped for _Toy Story 5_ and _Disclosure Day_ and _Masters of the Universe_ , where lowlifes like us who prowl the dregs of the nation’s streaming services for the newest and weirdest in action filmmaking absolutely do not belong. These are disreputable films, and every once in awhile the normies take a peek at what we’re watching to find the kind of disreputable thrills they can’t usually find at press screenings. They’re excited and they should be. But they’ll leave us to our wanderings soon enough. But hopefully not before we capture a few converts who have ever so briefly been given a chance to see the light at their local multiplex.\n\nremembering some guys (the paper tigers)",
  "title": "What to Watch After You've Watched The Furious (Or Before, That's Perfectly Fine Too)",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-14T20:26:54.453Z"
}