The Furious · reception & legacy

How The Furious has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Detonated as a midnight sensation at TIFF 2025, then spent nine months as action fans' most-hyped 'trust me on this' title before the June 2026 release confirmed it — near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score and instant 'best martial arts film since The Raid' anointment.

What's debated

Everyone agrees the fights are all-timers; the fan fight is whether the thin, awkwardly dubbed English dialogue matters — 'The Raid didn't need a script either' vs. 'imagine this movie with a real one.'

Its footprint

'The best martial arts movie since The Raid' has been repeated so often it's basically the film's unofficial subtitle — a comparison the film leans into by casting Raid alumni like Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian.

Where it stands

An instant canon-climber — the new 'have you seen it yet' handshake among Letterboxd's action and martial-arts crowd.

Named by the director

Influences Kenji Tanigaki has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

• Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (1978) — Tanigaki says seeing this Jackie Chan film as a kid was the one movie that changed his life and set him on the action path.
• Seven Chances (1925) — He cites Keaton's simple running-and-jumping set pieces as the kind of pure physical action that still plays a century later — the timelessness he chased here.
• Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) — He described his framing strategy as 'like George Miller on Fury Road — just put the action in the center of the frame.'
• Jackie Chan — Credited as the formative influence who made him fall in love with action cinema.
• Bruce Lee — Named among the classic action masters whose work shaped the film.
• Buster Keaton — Cited for wide, clean, edit-light staging of physical performance — the model for the film's grounded, no-CG approach.
• Gene Kelly — Named alongside Keaton and Harold Lloyd as a classic-film love — full-body movement captured in clean wide shots.