Joe Taslim Is Done Playing It Safe and 'The Furious' Proves It

The Future of Action Cinema Just Checked In - and It Fights Like a Journalist with Nothing to Lose

By Klep Napier | Wearecritix.com

With The Furious hitting theaters on June 12, 2026, the conversation around action cinema is heating up - and no one is more at the center of it than Joe Taslim. The Indonesian-born martial artist and actor, known globally for The Raid, Mortal Kombat II, and The Night Comes for Us, recently sat down with CritiX to discuss his work in The Furious, the philosophy behind elevating action storytelling, and why he genuinely doubted judo could work on screen - until it did.

There is a version of The Furious that never gets made. One where the people behind it play it safe, lean on what already works, and deliver exactly what audiences expect from a martial arts film. Joe Taslim is glad that version doesn't exist.

The Indonesian actor and martial artist has spent his career building one of the most compelling resumes in action cinema, from the brutal corridors of The Raid to the iconic coldness of Sub-Zero in Mortal Kombat and its sequel, which is currently in theaters. But with The Furious - opening across the US on June 12 - Taslim steps into something different. Something more intentional. And in a recent conversation with CritiX, he made clear that this film wasn't just another project. It was a statement.

A Film Built on a Dare

The Furious began not in a boardroom but over dinner in Jakarta. Director Kenji Tanigaki, whose work on Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In made him one of the most exciting voices in Asian action cinema, flew to Indonesia specifically to pitch Taslim on the project. The vision was ambitious by design: assemble the best action talent from Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, China, and the Vietnamese-American community, shoot in English, and make something that genuinely pushed the genre forward.

Taslim bought in immediately. Not because it was a safe bet, but because it wasn't. The film follows a humble tradesman whose daughter is kidnapped, forcing him to fight his way through a criminal network - and Taslim plays Navin, a journalist drawn into the chaos who has no business surviving any of it. That tension between vulnerability and determination is exactly what drew him to the role.

Judo, of All Things

One of the boldest choices in The Furious is also one of its most unexpected. Where most action films lean on visually spectacular styles - the acrobatics of wushu, the elegance of muay thai, the crisp precision of taekwondo - Taslim's character fights in judo. Raw, close-contact, unflashy judo.

It was a choice that even Taslim had to be convinced of. Judo doesn't look the way action movies usually look. There are no flying kicks, no sweeping combinations. It's about grip, leverage, and the controlled destruction of another person's balance. For an audience raised on wire work and slow-motion takedowns, it's a genuine ask.

Tanigaki's answer to that hesitation became the film's guiding principle: if the audience doesn't understand it, that's not a reason to change course. That's the job. Action cinema grows when it introduces something unfamiliar and earns the audience's trust in it. The Furious takes that responsibility seriously.

Navin: Built From the Inside Out

What separates Taslim's performance in The Furious from much of his previous work is the deliberate absence of invincibility. Navin is not a trained killer. He is not a superhero. He is a man who loves his wife, has found himself in an impossible situation, and refuses to stop moving no matter what it costs him.

That cost is something Taslim made sure to make visible. Rather than treating injuries as plot points to be forgotten in the next scene, he committed to carrying them. Every hit Navin absorbs changes how he moves. By the time the film reaches its climax, the physical toll is written into every step, every breath, every decision.

"I want to play a journey," Taslim explained. "Whatever happened to him, the gradual accumulation - until the end, when he needed to do the final blow. There's nothing left."

It's a performance philosophy that treats the body as a narrative tool, and it gives The Furious an emotional weight that pure spectacle can't manufacture.

🎬 WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28xXWJWY1co

Where the Magic Actually Came From

The film's centerpiece - a five-person brawl that has already become the sequence people can't stop talking about - was not entirely planned. Eighteen consecutive nights of shooting, exhausted performers, a floor slick with stage blood. Things slipped. People stumbled. And Tanigaki kept rolling.

That instinct, to let the controlled chaos breathe rather than cutting back to safety, is what gives the sequence its texture. The choreography is exceptional on its own terms, but it's the unscripted moments layered on top of it - the stumble that becomes a storytelling beat, the near-miss that reads as genuine desperation - that elevate it into something rare.

"The unplanned thing somehow polished the design to be more beautiful," Taslim said. It sounds like a contradiction until you watch the film and realize he's completely right.

Why It Matters

Action cinema has always been capable of more than it's given credit for. At its best, it's physical storytelling of the highest order - character revealed through movement, stakes made real through consequence. The Furious understands that, and it delivers accordingly.

With Mortal Kombat II already proving Taslim's mainstream draw and projects like the Indonesian remake of The Man From Nowhere on the horizon, 2026 is shaping up to be the year he moves from respected genre presence to something closer to essential. The Furious is the film that earns that conversation.

It opens June 12. See it on the biggest screen you can find.

Interview conducted by Klep Napier for CritiX Media. Watch the full interview on the CritiX YouTube channel.