Joe Taslim and Joey Iwanaga open up about the brutal, old-school action energy of The Furious.
The Furious is not here to play nice.
Directed by Kenji Tanigaki, the action film brings together a stacked international cast of martial artists and action performers for a brutal big-screen showdown built around impact, speed, and trust. It is the kind of movie that feels made for fans who miss hard-hitting martial arts cinema where the performers are clearly doing the work, the hits look painful, and the camera does not hide the action.
The film stars Xie Miao, Joe Taslim, Yang Enyou, Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Manatsanun Phanlerdwongsakul, Guo Junqing, Winai Wiangyangkung, with special appearances by Yayan Ruhian and Jija Yanin. It was written by Mak Tin Shu, Lei Zhilong, Shum Kwan Sin, and Frank Hui, and produced by Bill Kong, Shan Tam, and Frank Hui.
The story follows Wang Wei, played by Xie Miao, after his daughter is kidnapped by a criminal network, and the corrupt police offer no help. With nowhere else to turn, Wei sets out on a ruthless mission to find himself. His only ally is Navin, played by Joe Taslim, a relentless journalist whose wife has also mysteriously disappeared. Together, the unlikely duo tears through the kidnappers in an explosive martial arts revenge story.
For longtime action fans, the biggest reason to pay attention is the talent involved.
Joe Taslim has built an international action legacy through The Raid, The Night Comes for Us, Fast & Furious 6, Star Trek Beyond, Mortal Kombat, and Warrior. Joey Iwanaga, who plays the dangerous Pak Long in The Furious, brings his own screen-fighting background from projects such as Baby Assassins 2, Enter the Fat Dragon, Lion-Girl, Red Blade, and Muromachi Outsiders.
During my conversations with Taslim and Iwanaga for Nerdtropolis, both actors made one thing very clear: The Furious was built with the kind of real action energy that audiences can feel.
Joe Taslim Says The Furious Was Made To Elevate The Action Genre
When I told Joe Taslim that The Furious feels like the kind of martial arts movie built to shake theater walls, he immediately made it clear that the film was designed for action fans.
“This movie is dedicated to all action fans,” Taslim said. “People who don’t love action will love action after this movie.”
Taslim said everyone involved had one major goal: to push the action genre forward. That included director Kenji Tanigaki, producer Bill Kong, and the rest of the team behind the film.
“We want to elevate action genre,” Taslim said. “Kenji and Bill Kong and everybody involved worked so hard for it. And then I believe they did it.”
Even after being part of the film, Taslim said watching The Furious as a fan made him proud. He first saw it during its global premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and later watched it again at the Los Angeles premiere.
“Putting myself as an action fan, I love this movie,” Taslim said. “I’m so proud of it.”
That matters because Taslim is not just another actor entering an action movie. He is a former judo athlete and one of the modern faces of international martial arts cinema. His breakout role as Sergeant Jaka in The Raid helped introduce a new wave of audiences to Indonesian action cinema. Since then, he has played Jah in Fast & Furious 6, Manas in Star Trek Beyond, Sub-Zero in Mortal Kombat, Ito in The Night Comes for Us, and Li Yong in Warrior.
In The Furious, Taslim plays Navin, a journalist with a judo background who becomes part of the film’s revenge-fueled mission.
Joe Taslim Wanted The Furious To Show The Power Of Judo
For Taslim, one of the most exciting parts of The Furious was the chance to bring more judo to action fans.
He admitted he was initially unsure how audiences would respond to judo on screen because it does not always have the same visual flash as high kicks, flips, and aerial moves. Taslim said he told Tanigaki that people love “fancy kicks” and fighters doing “somersaults” and “jumping” through action scenes.
But Tanigaki’s response changed his mind.
“If they don’t understand, we make them understand,” Taslim recalled.
That idea unlocked something for Taslim. Instead of trying to make judo look like something else, The Furious leans into what makes the martial art so direct and dangerous.
“Judo, we never try to look beautiful,” Taslim said. “We just want to destroy our opponent.”
That mindset shapes Navin’s fighting style in the film. Taslim explained that Navin is always trying to get a good grip, control the opponent, and create a dangerous throw. That becomes part of the storytelling, especially in a fight that places judo against kung fu.
Taslim pointed to the way Xie Miao’s character reacts to Navin’s judo. Once he understands how dangerous Navin’s grip can be, he changes his distance, removes his jacket, and adjusts his sleeves so Navin cannot grab him as easily.
For Taslim, that is what separates a cool fight from a great fight.
“Designing a cool fight is easy,” Taslim said. “But design a fight that has storytelling, that’s hard.”
The Furious Uses Martial Arts As A Universal Language
The Furious brings together performers from different backgrounds, fighting styles, and languages. For Taslim, that was part of the magic.
“That’s the only language we speak,” Taslim said when talking about martial arts.
He said working with actors and martial artists who are great at what they do creates a different kind of bond. During rehearsals with Xie Miao, Taslim said the two grew closer through training, even though they did not share a fluent spoken language.
Taslim does not speak Mandarin fluently, and Xie Miao does not speak much English. Their communication relied on gestures, tone, movement, training, and trust. But that physical language brought them together.
“Every day, we just get more closer together,” Taslim said.
That connection shows up in the movie because The Furious is not built around hiding the action. The performers are right there in the frame, taking the audience into the fight with them.
Joe Taslim Says Action Stars Have A Responsibility To The Audience
Taslim’s approach to action was heavily shaped by The Raid, which he described as his first action movie and a film that taught him how action can tell a story.
“The Raid taught me the fight is storytelling,” Taslim said.
That lesson has stayed with him throughout his career. Taslim believes audiences need to see the character, played by the actor they came to watch, doing the action whenever possible. He said that when a movie cuts too much or hides the work, it can break the audience’s connection to the character.
For Taslim, that connection is everything.
“You invest in that character,” Taslim said. “But once there’s a betrayal in the process, the audience loses that connection.”
He also believes modern audiences are sharper than ever. They can spot when a fight scene is being overly cut, when a double is doing the heavy lifting, or when the action has been built around hiding the performer instead of showcasing them.
“I think actors, we gotta do better,” Taslim said. “We gotta really do our job. We gotta sacrifice. We gotta take the pain.”
That is a big reason The Furious feels so physical. It is not just about making a fight look cool. It is about making the audience believe in the character, the danger, and the impact.
Joey Iwanaga Found The Humanity Inside Pak Long
While Taslim’s Navin brings a controlled and direct judo energy to The Furious, Joey Iwanaga’s Pak Long brings something much more unhinged.
Pak Long is the kind of villain who can walk into a scene and immediately make the audience nervous. Iwanaga said he loved getting the chance to play someone that wild because it is not the kind of character he expects to play often.
“Oh, man. I loved it,” Iwanaga said. “That’s probably a character that I would never really play.”
What makes Pak Long interesting is that Iwanaga does not see him as purely evil. He sees a character with a broken emotional center, someone who never really grew up around unconditional love and does not fully understand what it means.
According to Iwanaga, Pak Long wants to build a life with his wife, his soon-to-be-born child, and his father-in-law. He wants to give back. He wants to love them as much as he can. But when his plan falls apart, everything inside him snaps.
“His screws are loose,” Iwanaga said. “They’re super loose.”
That gave Iwanaga a fun line to walk as a performer. Pak Long is dangerous, deranged, and unpredictable, but he is also driven by something emotional. That made him more than a basic villain.
“I think he’s not that evil, in my sense,” Iwanaga said. “So I think that was the most fun to play.”
Joey Iwanaga Says Kenji Tanigaki Built Pak Long Around Kicks
Iwanaga has a wide martial arts background, but when he arrived in Thailand for The Furious, Kenji Tanigaki gave him a very direct note.
“You’re a kicker,” Iwanaga recalled Tanigaki telling him. “You’re only going to do kicks.”
That became the starting point for Pak Long’s fighting style. Iwanaga said he did not want the character to feel like he was only using a traditional taekwondo kicking style. He wanted to bring in more of his own background.
Iwanaga trained in Kyokushin karate, a full-contact style that helped shape the way Pak Long’s kicks move through the fight scenes. He also pulled from dance because his parents were dancers, and he grew up around that environment.
That combination gave Pak Long a style built from karate, taekwondo, and dance.
“I wanted to kind of experiment on that as well,” Iwanaga said. “And it kind of worked out.”
But there was no room to fake it on a movie like The Furious, especially with a cast this intense.
“Honestly, when you’re fighting Joe Taslim, Xie Miao, Brian, and Yayan, you can’t really half-ass,” Iwanaga said. “You have to come in with full impact.”
That quote perfectly captures the energy of The Furious. It is a movie where the performers clearly understood the standard they had to meet, because everyone around them was bringing real skill, real timing, and real impact.
The Pain In The Furious Was Very Real
The Furious is packed with action that feels painful because, according to Iwanaga, a lot of it was.
“Dude, honestly, it’s all real,” Iwanaga said. “It’s almost all real.”
He said that when you are fighting some of the best martial artists and action actors working today, pulling back too much can almost feel disrespectful. That became clear during one of his first takes with Taslim.
Iwanaga said he kicked Taslim in the body, but held back. Taslim immediately called him out.
“He was like, ‘ What are you doing? Come on,” Iwanaga said. “I was like, okay, yeah, these guys are for real.”
That does not mean the set was reckless. Iwanaga said the goal was to be safe, but still brutal. That balance is difficult because the team had to perform this kind of action over and over again for weeks. Everyone needed to trust one another, stay professional, and avoid injuries while still making the scenes feel dangerous.
“We want it to be as safe as possible, but brutal as possible,” Iwanaga said.
That trust became one of the most important parts of the process.
“It was fun and dangerous,” Iwanaga said. “But mostly fun.”
The Furious Rehearsals Created Clockwork Precision
One of the standout pieces of The Furious is its major multi-person fight sequence near the end. Iwanaga said the team rehearsed for about two months before filming, which gave the performers time to build timing, trust, and muscle memory.
By the time they reached the five-man fight scene in the police station, Iwanaga said the cast had already bonded. They were going out for drinks, having dinner, and building friendships off set.
Even with language barriers, martial arts became the common language.
“When you do martial arts, it’s a universal language,” Iwanaga said.
That does not mean the action was easy. Iwanaga said the timing had to be precise because if one person missed a beat, the whole sequence could fall apart.
“If one person does something wrong, the whole thing’s going down,” Iwanaga said.
But once they got on set, the preparation paid off.
“Everything was like clockwork,” Iwanaga said.
By the time cameras were rolling, Iwanaga said the action was almost all muscle memory because they had spent so much time rehearsing.
Joey Iwanaga’s Favorite Fight Moment In The Furious
After everything his body went through, Iwanaga said the sequence he is most proud of involved a tight hallway fight. He described a moment where Brian Le’s character is coming at him while another performer is being carried, creating a chaotic and physically demanding setup.
The space was narrow, the movement had to be exact, and Iwanaga had to step back while kicking, then continue fighting as multiple performers came after him.
“That little small hallway scene is my favorite part,” Iwanaga said.
It is exactly the kind of moment that makes The Furious stand out. The movie does not just rely on big action beats. It also uses tight spaces, close contact, and performer-driven choreography to create fights that feel tense and alive.
Joe Taslim Reflects On His Action Legacy
Taslim has been part of several projects that helped define modern action for a new generation of fans. The Raid remains one of the most important martial arts films of the 2010s. The Night Comes for Us pushed violent action to another level. Warrior gave Taslim a major television role as Li Yong. Mortal Kombat introduced him to a huge fan base as Sub-Zero. Fast & Furious 6 and Star Trek Beyond brought him into major Hollywood franchises.
When asked if he ever thinks about how many fans have discovered martial arts cinema through his work, Taslim said the whole journey still feels overwhelming.
“I try my best,” Taslim said. “Everything that’s happened to me is overwhelming.”
Taslim said he feels lucky that his first major action movie allowed him to work with people who changed the way many audiences look at action. Since then, he has tried to be careful and selective with the projects he takes on.
“I only work with projects that I know I can be responsible for,” Taslim said.
That word, responsibility, came up again and again in our conversation. Taslim does not want to be part of something that makes fans feel like he has drifted away from the kind of work they connected with in the first place.
“I want to be faithful to what I do and why people love my work in the first place,” Taslim said.
That is what makes The Furious feel like such a natural fit for him. It is not just another action movie. It is a film that understands the responsibility of real action, real performers, and real audience trust.
Why The Furious Belongs On The Big Screen
The Furious is built for fans who want to see martial arts action with weight, clarity, and commitment. It has the throwback spirit of old-school action cinema, but the speed and intensity of a modern theatrical release.
This is the kind of movie where the cast had to earn every frame.
Joe Taslim wanted the film to introduce more audiences to the storytelling power of judo. Joey Iwanaga wanted Pak Long’s fighting style to feel unpredictable, physical, and full-impact. Kenji Tanigaki brought together performers who could speak through movement, fight through character, and make every hit feel personal.
For action fans, that is the promise of The Furious.
It is not trying to hide the work. It is showing you the work.
And when a movie brings together Joe Taslim, Xie Miao, Joey Iwanaga, Brian Le, Yayan Ruhian, and Jija Yanin under the direction of Kenji Tanigaki, that is more than enough reason to show up.
The Furious opens in theaters June 12.
Movie Details
Release Date: June 12, 2026
Directed by: Kenji Tanigaki
Written by: Mak Tin Shu, Lei Zhilong, Shum Kwan Sin, Frank Hui
Produced by: Bill Kong, Shan Tam, Frank Hui
Cast: Xie Miao, Joe Taslim, Yang Enyou, Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Manatsanun Phanlerdwongsakul, Guo Junqing, Winai Wiangyangkung, with special appearances by Yayan Ruhian and Jija Yanin.
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Sean Tajipour
Sean Tajipour is the Founder and Editor of Nerdtropolis and the host of the Moviegoers Society and Reel Insights Podcast. He is also a member of the Critics Choice Association. You can follow on Twitter and Instagram @Seantaj.
