Furies

When I sat down to watch the 2023 Vietnamese action crime thriller "Thanh Soi" (aka "Furies"), it was without ever having heard about it. However, that hardly mattered, because I liked the movie's cover, and also with it being an Asian movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I would give the movie a chance. Writers Nha Uyen Ly Nguyen, Veronica Ngo, Nguyen Truong Nhan, Nguyen Ngoc Thach and Aaron Toronto put together a nice enough script and storyline for the movie. It made for some good old fashioned femme fatale entertainment. There is a lot of action, both shooting and fighting, throughout the 109 minutes that the movie ran for. Given my lack of familiarity with the Vietnamese cinema, then I wasn't really familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie. I was familiar with a single actor, the henchman with the spiky hair, though I don't know his name. I have to say that I was genuinely entertained by "Thanh Soi", from star to end, so thumbs up to director Veronica Ngo for that accomplishment. If you enjoy a good action movie, where you just lean back and enjoy the action, then you should give "Thanh Soi" a chance. My rating of "Thanh Soi" lands on a six out of ten stars.

Furies was a good movie. I have yet to see the sequal but i can tell from this that it must be good. Furies is the first netflix original from vietnam. And i think it was a good star. It has good slick action and a fighting style that blends in well. The movie is also a little sad in some ways with the subject mater and films of rape are said upon. The movie is all about this young girl and after a childhood incident she is found by this woman that takes her in and decides to train her along with two other girls. All three have great characters and acting and it is entertaining to watch. The revenge element works well and overall furies was a pretty good movie.

This is an impressive "prequel" to Vietnam's martial arts thriller, Fury-although it could easily be a stand alone project. It is a violent, female driven martial arts thriller about a group of young women in Vietnam looking to equalize the sex trafficking violence of a controlling gang. There is more to the story's in any martial arts movie, revenge plays a major role. Not many Vietnamese martial arts, action movies get air time in the west so it is cool and exciting that this one has. It is deserved. It is crafted in filmmaking styler of The Raid and other Indonesian martial arts films. The fight choreography and violence are fun to watch. The use of color and cinematography make this watchable. The heart of it is the underdog nature of the leading characters.

Veronica Ngo, star of Furie, plays Jacqueline, who rescues three young women from a tough life on the streets, training the girls to defend themselves against nasty, sex-mad men. When ready, Jacqueline sends the trio -- Thanh (Toc Tien), Hong (Rima Thanh Vy) and Bi (Dong Anh Quynh) -- on a mission to wipe out a gang of human traffickers, who are led by the despicable 'Mad Dog' Hai (Thuan Nguyen). After risking their lives doing so, Bi becomes suspicious of Jacqueline's real motives... I felt that the Vietnamese action film Furie (2019) suffered from serious pacing issues: the finale was great, but the fight scenes leading up to it were sporadic and not handled very well. This sequel-in-name-only, directed by its star Ngo, remedies that issue, with regular bouts of adrenaline-pumping action, each set-piece wilder than the one before. Ngo is perhaps a little too ambitious at times, such as with the motorbike/moped chase that suffers from some noticeably weak visual effects, but that still doesn't prevent it from being fun -- in some ways, the rather cartoonish look of that particular sequence suits the outrageousness of the action unfolding before our eyes. Ngo certainly handles the film's martial arts scenes like a seasoned pro, the complex choreography and kinetic camerawork combining to deliver plenty of excitement; the director has clearly been studying the great action movies of recent years, with close-quarter combat scenes reminiscent of The Raid 2 and Oldboy. Ngo also gives the whole affair a wonderfully gaudy, comic-book aesthetic, befitting the rather trashy storyline: the entire film is drenched in neon lighting and there is some nice use of De Palma-style split-screen. 7.5/10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb. A marked improvement over Furie -- I would definitely welcome another Furies film with Ngo at the helm.

I won't write a long review because what I love most about Asian action movies is the lively fight choreography. It is so cool that it covers any minuses. I'd love to watch those nimble brutal fights for hours. Without tedious Hollywood chatter, without heaps of computer graphics, without actors who do not like to wallow on a dirty floor, fill bumps, taking fabulous money for pathetic semblances of stunts and fights. I sincerely respect Western dramatic art, artistic design solutions, but the genre of a real karate action movie in the European and Western world is dying out. I bow to the stuntmen and fighters of the Vietnamese and Indonesian action movies. They give all their best for little money, show a real naturalistic spectacle. "Fury", Furies", "Raid", "The Night Comes for Us", "Headshot" 2016 are mega-cool works. Taking this opportunity, I express huge gratitude to their directors, actors, stuntmen. You are awesome guys! I appreciate your work! I would like to thank the actresses and authors of this film separately. I gave "The Furies" a score of 10/10 for only one choreography. The genre and style of such cinematography needs special support. It's sad that the audience gives such films low ratings , without making allowances for budget, genre, and living work. Let it not abstruse scenarios, not deep dramas, and pompous fantasy, but this is what most modern Hollywood action films lack.