“Furies” pales compared to the relatively confident “Furie” in any scene where the characters have to relate to each other beyond propulsive violence. Action director Samuel Kefi Abrikh, who also choreographed the fight scenes in “Furie,” still delivers a number of stand-out moments, but the ensemble cast members aren’t as memorable when they’re not tearing up the screen.
In an unsettling introductory scene, a young Bi (Thuy Linh) loses her mother, a prostitute, after a drunken john attacks both women and accidentally sets fire to their tiny houseboat. Fifteen years later, Bi gets rescued and adopted by Jacqueline and her two pupils, Hong and Thanh. All four women have either been raped or sexually assaulted, and it’s to the filmmakers’ credit that a few scenes directly address that intense bond. In one sizzle reel-ready highlight, Bi returns from an especially brutal altercation with an out-of-control fight-or-flight response triggered by memories of her mother. She can’t stop throwing punches, and in that moment, not even Thanh can stop her without throwing some back.
The villains of “Furies” aren’t nearly as memorable. Thuan Nguyen delivers an unremarkable performance as the reputedly demonic pimp Mad Dog Hai, and his fellow traffickers are only as threatening as the women they imperil. A last-minute twist adds an extra narrative wrinkle to Jacqueline and her girls’ feud with Hai, but their mutual antagonism is not much more complicated than it first seems. He’s a violent slimeball, and they’re avenging angels. They fight, and sometimes that’s pretty cool to look at.
Abrikh’s choreography, while consistently solid, only sometimes has the same ingenious spark that blazed throughout “Furie.” Ngo’s camera matches the concussive pace and wild movements of her performers, but a few action scenes look like hand-me-downs, given how closely they resemble the beatdowns in “Furie.” That said, when the moment calls for a truly unhinged and grisly spike of adrenaline, Abrikh and Ngo deliver a few indelibly gnarly images. You know a fight will be good when it starts with one attacker wrenching a bloody syringe out of her neck.
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