Tag Archives: martial arts

“The Furious”: Won’t Somebody From “The Raid” Please Think About the Children

June 19, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Two Asian men stand side-by-side on a grungy nighttime street, not happy.

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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“The Raid 2”: Another Rendezvous with Rama

April 13, 2014 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Iko Uwais, "The Raid 2"

An imprisoned Rama (Iko Uwais) prepares for the most creative use of a broomstick since the Harry Potter series.

Midlife Crisis Crossover calls The Raid 2 the Bloodiest Film of the Year!

A safe bet, considering I stopped going out of my way for horror movies years ago and I’m not part of the macho-demographic target for Schwarzenegger’s post-political film career. But one of my guilty pleasures is an infrequent indulgence in films that I can best describe as tough-guy ballet. For me the Indonesian martial-arts flick The Raid: Redemption — which I watched a few months ago, a former Redbox disc I bought for a buck at a Family Dollar store — had been on my radar after reading online recommendations that piqued my curiosity. Between its straightforward obstacle-course premise and slickly shot martial-arts choreography, it was ideal Saturday afternoon programming for any discerning fight-scene fan who’s cool with subtitles and appreciates how the (comparatively) small screen trapped and shrank all that violence to minimize the ick factor.

After Redemption pulled in a modest $4 million in its 2012 art-house run, I was surprised that the sequel opened in quite a few screens ’round town this weekend, albeit without its original overseas title, The Raid 2: Berendal, which I suppose for us simple Americans might read too confusingly as a subtitle that needs its own subtitle.

This way for more fight-‘n’-fight-‘n’-fight!