Upfront, there is something you should know about Furious, lest you become just that in baffled frustration. For as little dialogue as this indie rarity holds, it contains even less of another critical storytelling element: sense. More than 16% of the movie passes before a single line is uttered; once they do emerge, the words confound with mystical hokum like, “You are now between anvil and hammer. The dove is a gentle creature, full of good. … Wisdom must come from within.”
You’re not (necessarily) high. Watching Furious just makes you feel that way.
In a showcase for his considerable martial-arts talents, Showdown in Little Tokyo supporting player Simon Rhee stars as — stretttttttttch — Simon. His sister (Arlene Montano, L.A. Streetfighters) seeks … well, something; I forget exactly what — such is a side effect of the Furious experience — but she uses a compass in which the needle has been swapped with some sort of tusk or tooth. Whatever it is, the damn thing still works … assuming she wanted to be pointed toward the astral plane of certain doom. Meanwhile, taking a break from teaching karate to half-pints, Simon embarks on a quest of his own and runs afoul of … well, everybody.
The first of Furious’ many all-feet-on-deck fight sequences erupts in the atrium of an office park — aka Bad Guy Headquarters — where a woman kicks nuts and rakes her nails across men’s eyes, and where one guy looks like the chef hero of the arcade classic BurgerTime. Another rock-’em-sock-’em altercation — this one fought with twirling swords — is waged inside a Chinese restaurant frequented by old ladies eating chicken ordered off menus the size of stone tablets on which God displayed his Ten Commandments.
The physical pièce de résistance, however, pits Simon agains the evil Master Chan (Rhee’s real-life brother Phillip, the common thread woven through all four installments of the Best of the Best franchise), who possesses the power to zap his opponents into poultry — and uses it unsparingly, because c’mon, like you wouldn’t? Simon reigns supreme by ducking underneath one of Chan’s power-finger bolts, which then bounces off a mirror and back onto the power-finger bolter himself, transforming him into a pig. One might say Chan gets a taste of his own medicine, and it sure ain’t kosher!
Sound strange? Just think, I skipped over the magic demonstration doubling as the opening credits, the whispering waterfall, the talking dog, the guy whose hands spurt flames, the giant dragon head that may have been made for a church carnival, the Devo-esque New Wave rock band or the alien invasion. Yes, the alien invasion. While that nugget of info should clear up any narrative questions, it instead succeeds only in stirring more confusion into the plot pot. The oddball flick is a kung-fu extravaganza as directed by Upstream Color wunderkind Shane Carruth (but actually comes from the team of Tim Everitt and Tom Sartori): nonstop action rendered as a semi-lucid, stream-of-consciousness mindfuck. Its bizarre operatic quality is something to behold … or beware, depending upon your ability to suspend disbelief of your disbelief. —Rod Lott