This 2026 Thriller With Breathtaking Action Sequences Has A Near-perfect Rating On Rotten Tomatoes

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If you thought a movie needed anything other than incredible fight scenes to get the better of the Tomatometer, "The Furious" is here to prove you wrong. Directed by martial arts maestro Kenji Tanigaki, the film is essentially one long fight montage that showcases some of the most innovative and fun on screen combat you'll ever see. That alone seems to have been enough to earn it a near-perfect rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

/Film's Chris Evangelista called "The Furious" the best action movie of 2026 so far, and considering how relentlessly inventive, raw, and downright awesome the action scenes in this movie are, it will almost certainly maintain that standing until the end of the year. If you thought "John Wick: Chapter 4" was proof that an action movie could have too much action, then "The Furious" will send your mind into meltdown. When it comes to plot, Tanigaki's film makes "Chapter 4" look like "War and Peace," if Leo Tolstoy's classic also featured highly-trained badasses swinging motorcycles at each other.

The movie stars Xie Miao as South Asian handyman Wang Wei. (The film doesn't provide an exact setting beyond that.) In classic action movie style, the mute father of one just wants to live a quiet life. But after his daughter, Rainy (Yang Enyou), is kidnapped, he's forced to unleash a torrent of hurt upon her captors and anybody else that gets in his way. As it turns out, there are plenty of people who fit into the latter category. After getting nowhere with corrupt local law enforcement, Wei's only ally becomes journalist Navin (Joe Taslim), whose wife has also disappeared. Those are the only plot points this film needs to launch an explosion of martial arts action that doesn't let up until the moment the credits roll.

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In "The Furious," fight scenes often produce the kind of vignettes that transcend the action genre to resemble baroque paintings, such as the moment Wang Wei scales what is essentially a human pyramid of goons while wielding a hammer in the center of an octagon (as seen above). All of this seems to have won over every single critic that's seen the film. At least, that is, every single "top critic" on Rotten Tomatoes.

At the time of writing, not a single one of RT's top critics has given "The Furious" a negative review. William Bibbiani of TheWrap dubbed it "one of the best fight movies of the 21st century" and "a spectacular, run-and-gun, beat 'em up, martial arts extravaganza." Elsewhere, RogerEbert.com's Brian Tallerico admitted that while "the dialogue is atrocious" and "the plotting is goofy," ultimately "no one will care because Tanigaki has conceived, choreographed, and executed some of the most impressive fight scenes in years." Indeed, Amy Nicholson of the Los Angeles Times felt the fight choreography was so inspired it could teach John Wick himself a thing or two. "In five years," she wrote, "Keanu Reeves will be brawling like this."

Other positive reviews on RT describe the movie as "Looney Tunes in a slaughterhouse," "lizard-brain ass-kicking done about as well as you could hope," and "the summer's must-see for anyone with a taste for ferocious pandemonium." It appears critics couldn't help themselves when it came to "The Furious," further confirming that this is indeed, the best action movie of 2026.

"The Furious" is now playing in theaters.