Tags: blog, film, action, recommended, 2026

Author: KickingK

Date: Sunday July 26th, 2026

I HEARD YOU!

The first thing we have to talk about when discussing The Furious is the dialogue. Martial Arts movies have a long and interesting history when it comes to dialogue, language dubbing and subtitles. So infamous is the culture of weird martial art flick dialogue it even seeps into other genres, such as the Police Academy documentary series.

But even by that colourful standard, The Furious stands out.

The film is set 'Somewhere in South East Asia', but never named specifically. Some of the film uses a variety of local languages, which are subtitled, even when the actors use English idioms. Which is an uncanny, jolting reminder that you're reading subtitles.

But ninety percent of the dialogue is in English. And not the kind of over-dubbed English where the actor's lips bare no relation to the words that are coming out of them, the actors are actually speaking English. Just with weirdly precise American accents.

That's right, the actors are acting in English and then the studio have dubbed over them to remove their accents.

This is both the most oddly effective and bizarrely jarring technique I've seen in a non-English language film. No, your brain isn't dealing with the disconnect between mouth and sound. But on the other hand, I know what Joe Taslim sounds like and it's not that.

The sound mix makes it even odder, as it's mixed more akin to an animated movie, with the dialogue 'on top' of everything else, as opposed to traditional ADR where it's mixed 'in' to make it sound more natural. Which actually ends up being a positive as it means you get to here every line of dialogue as clear as a bell, despite the cacophony that's often happening at the same time. This is the anti-Nolan of film dialogue.

Oh, but some characters seem to be dubbed from their native language into English and the moments I spotted that I think my brain leaked out my ears at the incongruity of it all.

And I haven't even mentioned that the main character is deaf and mute. Which in the context of the rest of the film just comes across like a cost saving measure.

But how much difference does this make to the quality of the film and your enjoyment of it? Absolutely nothing, obviously. This is a martial arts action film and the only question worth asking is Does It Kick Arse?

Yes. It really kicks arse.

The endless fight scenes are inventive, funny, athletic and skilful. It's not at the quality of The Raid, it veers too much towards the flashy and overly complicated for my personal taste.¹ But they're consistently entertaining and keep your interest going until the plot stops and we get a gang-busters five person, three way fight at the end, introducing Yayan 'no guns' Ruhian, Joey Iwanaga, who I last saw being great in Baby Assassins 2 and Brian Le jumping around like an angry frog.

There's some really great editing in this fight, with several very long sequences that are actually lots of intense, short sequences almost imperceptibly stitched together. There's also some very subtle cgi used to have multiple fights happening in camera at the same time.

Normally, the way to have this level of chaos on screen in martial arts films is to keep the choreography simple, with basic timing. Easy to repeat across multiple takes, rough enough that it'll look good when not performed perfectly and with enough breathing room between moves that you can get it right in one or two takes. You can't do Jackie Chan amounts of re-shoots if you have more than a handful of people in shot.

But the final fight here manages a staggering amount of chaos on screen whilst maintaining pace and technique. The downside being that it's difficult to marvel at the choreography when there's so much happening at the same time.

Pretty much the only time I gasped at the techniques on screen were when Joey Iwanaga moved so quickly the camera couldn't keep up. Blimey, he is rapid.

Still, taken as a whole, this is a blast and anyone wanting a proper, all out martial arts action film is going to be delighted.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

1. For my taste, the great modern fight scene is the lift fight in Merentau. Simple, great technique and tells a story.

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