Published Jun 16, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT
Rohan Naahar is a News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he’ll watch anything once. He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.
With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day topping the box-office charts and dominating headlines this past weekend, a movie with superior reviews and higher audience scores sort of fell by the wayside. However, its performance cannot be ignored. The movie in question didn’t have a globe-spanning marketing campaign, nor does it feature A-list stars. It’s succeeding purely on the strength of terrific reviews and growing audience buzz. We’re talking about The Furious, the martial arts action film that premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival — during the same edition that featured ***Obsession ***— and was picked up for domestic distribution by Lionsgate.
The studio is currently enjoying the biggest hit in its history, the music biopic Michael, which has grossed around $935 million worldwide. Later this year, Lionsgate will release a new installment in the Hunger Games franchise, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. However, it continues to put its weight behind genre titles such as The Furious, which hails from director Kenji Tanigaki and stars Xie Miao and Joe Taslim. Pre-release buzz compared the film to action hits such as John Wick and The Raid, and reviews seem to back those comparisons. The movie’s extraction-centric narrative also has shades of Taken, which emerged as a word-of-mouth hit nearly two decades ago and turned Liam Neeson into an action star.
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
The Furious currently holds a “Certified Fresh” 97% critics’ score and a “Verified Hot” 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The aggregator website’s consensus reads, “The Furious detonates into a relentless, blood-soaked spectacle of breathtakingly inventive martial arts choreography, with director Kenji Tanigaki delivering a brutal, balletic action extravaganza.” The movie grossed $2.75 million in its domestic opening weekend, playing in just around 1,200 theaters and securing a top-10 spot. It delivered a higher per-theater average than holdover titles such as The Mandalorian and Grogu and Michael. Produced on a reported budget of $20 million, The Furious topped the box-office charts in China, where it grossed $13.5 million for an early global haul of $15 million. Fans of Asian martial arts movies can look forward to master fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping’s Blades of the Guardians, which will be released digitally on June 30.
The Furious is in theaters now. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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