3. Vietnam — Furie
2019, starring Veronica Ngo
Hell hath no fury like a woman whose daughter is kidnapped by an evil child organ harvesting syndicate, and that woman happens to be an expert martial artist and former hood who gave up that city gangster life for rural domestic life. Or something like that.
Furie (Hai Phuong) is basically Taken in Vietnam with a female protagonist. It is a fun and often silly popcorn action flick with a cool setting and lead actress. The locations are gorgeously shot, from the rural beginning to the cityscape of Saigon, aka Ho Chi Minh City. That city is at once loud, crowded, chaotic, vibrant, dangerous, and thrilling. Unfortunately, the non-fight scenes can be dull, especially in the beginning, and the dialogue, even subtitled, comes across as cringe worthy. But no one watches Fast & Furious for the dialogue. We’re here for the fights. And some of them are better choreographed than in comparable Hollywood movies, but certain choices are confounding.
The ending takes place at night on a train with pretty bad CGI. I checked the Taken wiki just to make sure that movie didn’t have a train sequence too. (I don’t think it does.) I’m not sure why the organ harvesting syndicate couldn’t use semi trucks or something. Attaching your criminal enterprise to state-owned Vietnam Railways seems like a sure-fired way to get caught. Of course, the police here are comically incompetent and ineffective, but will gladly take credit after the heroine saves the day. The criminals also don’t have any guns, until the very end when a new crew of anonymous baddies inexplicably show up armed to the teeth. Where were they earlier? When the bad guys knocked our heroine unconscious and have the prime opportunity to kill her, they instead dump her still-breathing body into a lake. They must have seen too many James Bond movies.
Speaking of action movie tropes, the director didn’t seem to have a grasp that the audience understands how these movies generally work and you don’t have to explain every turn in painstaking detail. Our heroine only needs to look at one board (not three) of unsolved child abductions in the detective’s office before realizing she can’t rely on the police. Of course, the hospital nurse is going to help our heroine escape; you don’t need to have a long dialogue scene of her begging, from mother to mother, for the nurse’s help. A 90 minute movie should move quickly, but somehow this one drags.
Veronica Ngo is quite stunning and captivating as the titular heroine. She’s a former boat child refugee, model, and pop singer. I guess pop stars turned movie stars are as common in Vietnam as they are in Hong Kong. Ngo also had a minor, silent role as Kelly Marie Tran’s doomed sister in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Her fight choreography is surprisingly good and she kicks ass, despite having apparently no martial arts background. She’s no Gina Carano in Haywire, but she’s probably somewhere close to Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde, or Jodie Comer in Killing Eve, even though those are all better films or series. However, the main villain (or at least I think she was) of the crime syndicate was odd and lackluster. In terms of brute strength, if Ngo was Black Widow, she was Captain Marvel. Of course, no explanation is given as to her background or superior fighting skills, other than that she’s main baddy.
What does it say about Vietnam? To Americans, Vietnam is equated with trauma, poverty, and war. Through its modern history, it has dealt with imperialism from a parade of outside forces: the French, the Americans, the Chinese. I wanted to pick a movie for Vietnam that was not about the Vietnam War, there are enough of those. An interesting recent take on the Vietnam War movie was Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods (2020), in which Veronica Ngo had another small role. It appears that Furie was mostly Vietnamese written, directed, acted, and produced. However, its formula, influences, and fights are wholly derived from Hollywood and Hong Kong action movies. If I learned anything, it’s that Vietnam can paint by the numbers too.
I saw Furie on Netflix.
This is #3 in my World Tour of Cinema project. Read my introductory post here.
