Furies/Thanh Soi: Cuc Dai Trong Dem

There have been many action flicks with kick-ass females at the center. On the wholesome glitzy side, Charlie's Angels. Andy Sedaris cluttered the 80s landscape with a slew of soft-core pornish outings for Dona Speir and a bevy of hunks and silicone-enhanced babes as super government agents. (James Bondage, anyone?) Others from here and abroad - especially several East Asian countries - have ranged from the serious to moderately sexy to outright spoofs. This one lands at the grittiest end of the spectrum, and does so with an above-average plot and cast.

A Saigon woman rescues three young women and trains them to take down Saigon's biggest psycho gang leader, who deals drugs, runs casinos and clubs, and - worst of all - abuses and traffics young women. The trio have their own traumas and find both sisterhood and purpose in their mission.

The three are quite attractive and often shown in skimpy, yet still PG-13ish, outfits. But they're at their peak in the training and fighting sequences. No idea if any of them are real martial artists, but they look very convincing in combat.

Nothing gets soft-pedaled here. There's no nudity, and most of the sex is forced, not romantic. It's also as gory as any contemporary male-dominated productions.

Veronica Ngo stars, directs and co-wrote. Her real co-star is fight choreographer Kefi Abrikh. He'd done the same with Ngo as the star of 2019's Furie, for which this is a prequel. No need to have seen that to enjoy this one. When you're looking for this type of guilty-pleasure flick, Furies delivers on all counts.

Furies deals with three vigilante killers put together as a team by Jacqueline to bring down a crime syndicate. As the story is set in the past, the narrative resorts to a grim tone right from the beginning painting the town run by brutal, women trafficking, drug peddling crime syndicate. The three girls too are wronged by men and humiliated by the society making it easier to train them as a team to achieve the goal of Jacqueline. Will they achieve it forms rest of the story.

The problem with Furies is it sticks to one tone, a grim one and tries harder to narrate a messy screenplay. The three characters despite all the pain they went through in the past hardly leave an impression neither any of the villains stand out. The action set pieces remain the sole saving grace considering when the action stops, the drama gets tedious. As there is no attempt to break the monotony, the motorcycle action scene goes down due to poor vfx.

The third act blows up with a lengthy action scene and a surprising twist. On paper this might sound better but what happens on screen, loses it's impact. Even the final reveal doesn't really explain how or why this character could simply turn out to be the very person she dreaded. The ambition to turn this into a credible franchise is visible but with hardly any memorable characters, the film suffers a lot.

Another female-driven action film and a lot better than the ones Hollywood has been putting out recently (I can't even remember the title of the lame offering with Karen Gillan). This one is spearheaded by Veronica Ngo, who appeared in the earlier FURIE, which is only loosely linked to this movie. I thought the earlier film was fine but hampered by a low budget, and the good news is that things have been ramped up a lot here. There are multiple heroines and lavish fight scenes featuring them tackling huge rooms and long corridors full of marauding gangsters. The plot is workable, the emotion heartfelt, and there are even some good surprise twists along the way.

Shortly after this film, set in '90s Saigon, opens young Bi is attacked by one of her mother's clients. In the ensuing fight her mother is killed and she kills her attacker. Living on the streets of Saigon is dangerous and she is taken under the wing of Jacqueline, a woman who is also looking after two other girls, Hong and Thanh. They are trained to fight so they can defend themselves and others. One day, when they are considered ready, Jacqueline has them take on a gang that is abusing women. This will lead to fighting with martial arts, knives and guns and a climax that features a surprising twist.

If you are a fan of the action genre this is definitely worth watching. The action starts in the opening scenes and rarely lets up until the credits roll. This action is full on and nicely varied. There are some effects used, a fight on motorbikes would be impossible without them, but for the most part they aren't too obvious. The fights are all fairly gruelling and one constantly feels that out heroines are in real danger. We know deep down that three women couldn't take down scores of gangsters but while caught up in the action it isn't too hard to suspend ones disbelief. The camerawork is highly kinetic giving the viewer the feeling that they are almost in the action at times. The cast does a solid job; sometimes the villains are a bit OTT but this is clearly a deliberate choice. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to fans of the action genre.

These comments are based on watching the film in Vietnamese with English subtitles.

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.