ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL Lincoln Center June 28-July 14, 2019

[Chris Knipp]

LE VAN KIET: FURIE/ HAI PHUONG(2019)


VERONICA NGO IN FURIE

Vietnamese superstar Veronica Ngo headlines as a mother looking for her kidnapped daughter in genre maestro Le-Van Kiet’s latest crime thriller.

VARIETY review by Elizabeth Kerr: "Another kidnapped child, another parent on a quest for revenge and/or justice. This time around the parent in question is a struggling Vietnamese single mom in writer-director Le-Van Kiet's Furie, a modest but engagingly familiar actioner that has just a fresh enough point of view to make it worth a look for fight fans. ...[an] ideal mix of fisticuffs, a wholly watchable lead, and being a selection from a country we see too little from outside Asia."

I found the shots of local landscape, rice paddies, greenery, wetland, and bush, and the villages just small enough to see crowded without having many people, very attractive and exotic, really feeling "Vietnamese," as if I knew what that was. I didn't find the villains attractive, and I found the heroine's struggle dogged rather than exciting. It was not I story that kept on giving.