Our heroes, Xie Miao and Joe Taslim.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Once every decade some indie studio will scrounge up enough money to afford a brief wide release for a brutal foreign-language martial-arts flick to remind Americans the John Wick series isn’t the be-all-end-all of the genre. The last one I saw on the big screen was 2014’s The Raid 2, so I’m pretending to be an authority here. Such works rarely hit the big screen near us, or if they do, nobody tells me. Not that I watch a lot of them anyway, but at last, another one has broken through that isn’t a Raid sequel!

Judging by US box office tallies, nobody noticed last weekend’s premiere of The Furious, the third work from Kenji Tanigaki as a primary director. He’s a longtime stunt coordinator with a hand in numerous Western movies from Blade II to Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins, who also collaborated with four writers on the six or seven minutes’ worth of scenes that are not fights. For anyone who hoped Mortal Kombat II‘s tournament would be more a visceral thrill-ride but found its sci-fi artificiality a cartoonish letdown, The Furious is here for you.

The Gist: THEY FIGHT! AND FIGHT! AND FIGHT AND FIGHT AND FIGHT! FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!

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