Released: February 2019(Vietnam)
Director: Le-Van Kiet
Run Time: 98 Minutes
Not Rated
Distributor: Well Go USA
Genre: Action/Thriller
Cast:
Veronica Ngo: Hai Phuong
Cat Vi: Mai
Hoa Tran: Thanh Soi
Than Nhien Phan: Luong
Back in 2008, a tiny film starring Liam Neeson was released. Taken was a story about a retired CIA operative whose daughter was kidnapped by human traffickers in France. After hearing the kidnap take place on the phone, Neeson’s character set out on a one-man rampage to find his daughter and bring her home, whilst punishing those responsible. It was a real solid action film in its own right that was really intense from beginning to end. While the kidnapping sub-genre has been around for decades, Taken made the sub-genre explode with two sequels and inspired a whole ton of similar films including Traffik, The Call, Kidnap, and Acts of Violence. It wasn’t just Western cinema that really got a taste of what Taken brought to the table. We’ve seen multiple films across the Far East that deal with kidnapping such as Merantau and Paradox. If handled right, kidnapping movies can be some of the most compelling and intense films in cinema. Now, we have a new kidnapping thriller from Vietnam called Furie. Is it a good kidnapping thriller or is it among the hundreds of poorly conceived thrillers that nobody remembers?
The film opens as former gang boss Hai Phuong is collecting debts from various people so that she can have her daughter, Mai, get an education so she doesn’t end up like her mother. During a trip to a local market, little Mai is accused of stealing somebody’s wallet, and when Hai argues with her, Mai runs away. Mai gets kidnapped by a group of thugs while Hai gives chase only for them to get away with her little girl. Discovering that they went to Saigon, her old territory, Hai heads to Saigon to find her baby girl and destroy the gangsters responsible. A good kidnap thriller requires a few things in order for the film to work. One: The story needs to be as straight-forward as possible. The thing about kidnappings is that there is a time limit. The longer that someone remains missing, the chances of finding them alive decrease dramatically. In a film, you need to maintain that level of intensity by avoiding going off the beaten path for extended periods of time. You can have a twist here and there to shake things up a bit, but they shouldn’t derail the main story very much. That’s what I love about movies like Taken and Furie. They know to keep the audience engaged by keeping the story focused on a single point. Furie does a very good job with this by focusing on Hai and her struggle to recover her child. It’s simple, doesn’t deviate from the main story and is better for it. It’s not the most original story, but it’s done very well.
The next thing a kidnap thriller needs are characters that feel human and real. The first half of this are characters that you empathize with. The second of this idea is to have villains that are still human but are vicious. You don’t get more brutal than human traffickers. Furie’s focus is on the character of Hai. Hai is not a perfect person, in fact she’s done some pretty awful things in her life, but her daughter gives her reason enough to try and turn things around. You get to see the relationship between Hai and Mai for the first 10-15 minutes, and it’s remarkably effective. The way the character is written is as someone who is vulnerable, yet determined and bad-ass when she needs to be. Veronica Ngo’s performance in this film as Hai, is one of the best female performances I’ve seen this year, so far. This is her movie and she carries it like none other. I’ve always been a fan of Veronica’s since I first saw her in The Rebel about a decade ago. Cat Vi plays Hai’s daughter, Mai, and she’s a little spitfire. She’s a very willful kid and she’s adorable, which makes her kidnapping a pretty rough affair. On the villain side of things, you have Hoa Tran playing Than Soi, the gang leader. The character is a ruthless and vicious bitch of a woman that doesn’t care about the harm she’s causing. Hoa is absolutely fantastic as the villain and extremely intimidating. Most of the men are relegated to the side-lines except for Luong, a detective that’s been investing a string of child abductions for about three years. Aside from him, this is a woman’s show with women playing both the hero AND the villain, and I think it works very well for this film.
The final thing a kidnap thriller needs is the conflict between the hero and the villain. In this case, it’s between Hai and the gang that kidnapped her daughter. In this arena, Furie excels. The chase sequences are intense and the fight sequences are brutal. What separates the fights in this movie from many others is in how much emotion is infused into these battles. Hai is a woman on a mission and nothing is going to stand in her way. Each fight that happens is drenched in desperation and hatred. There is a fight sequence in which Hai tracks down a reformed criminal in order to find out where the gang took her daughter. She gets into a fight with this guy when his mother tries to intervene and pleads with both Hai and her son to resolve the situation. It is a scene that is both exciting and emotionally engaging. I appreciate the fact that the film-makers took the time to make these sequences as much about the characters as they are about the action. The story and characters should always drive the action, not the other way around. The final battle on the train at the end of the movie is one of the best final battles I’ve seen in a movie of this sort. It’s intense, hard-hitting, and well choreographed. The cinematography is absolutely amazing as well. A lot of the film takes place at night, but in the underworld of Saigon, the colors and hues just pop out at the audience while maintaining that kind of grit that these movies use. It’s a fantastic looking film and you can see what’s going on.
While I loved Furie overall, I couldn’t help but notice a few dings here and there. For one, there are a lot of flashbacks that are supposed to flesh out Hai’s backstory a bit. While one or two may have sufficed and I would have been fine with them, there were quite a few and they got in the way of the film’s pacing a bit. Not too much, but it was noticeable. Some of these flashbacks felt very redundant as we learned about Hai and what she’s capable of with the first ten minutes of the film. That being said, Furie is one of the better kidnap thrillers that I’ve seen in recent years. I’ve been a huge fan of Vietnamese action movies for about a decade now, and Furie is another home-run for Vietnam. They should be proud and Veronica Ngo should be extremely proud of the performance that she delivered here. She’s been in a handful of Western films including Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but she’s been criminally under-used. She’s a fantastic actress and action star in her own right. I wish that Western film-makers would recognize that fact. If you like action movies and/or kidnap thrillers in the style of Taken, then you should check out Furie immediately. I think it’s a fantastic film that delivers on all fronts.
My Final Recommendation: Hell hath no fury like a mother with a particular set of skills. 8.5/10