Taken meets Tekken in this martial arts movie about a mute man (Xie Miao) rescuing his daughter (Yang Enyou) from child traffickers.

From its opening title card, ‘Somewhere in Southeast Asia’, The Furious makes it clear that this action flick is not to be taken seriously; our mute hero chases down a truck in his flip-flops, gets hit by a car at full-speed and gets straight back up again. But by immediately establishing that he is indestructible, it makes it impossible to care about the would-be death-defying series of fight scenes that follow.

And while the action is impressive, resourcefully incorporating hammers, ladders and bicycles, the film flip-flops between eye-gouging fight sequences and eye-rolling dialogue scenes – if you can even call it dialogue when one character is simply explaining the plot to the silent protagonist. His muteness is also a sign of the film’s cynical eye on the export market; with its pan-Asian production, badly dubbed English and Hollywood clichés, The Furious is compromised fast.

Though it shares two actors (Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian) with 2011’s phenomenal The Raid, this no-stakes and ladders affair has none of the Indonesian movie’s intensity or realism, instead opting for cheesy sentimentality and lame characters – including a hulking comedy henchman (Brian Le) described as “the poster boy for head trauma”, which is a bewildering title and a real kick in the dick for Jake Paul.

The Furious is set in a world where people yell things like “This is your fate!”, where pulverised faces and skulls can grow back, and where literally everyone (including a journalist) knows kung fu, as though it’s a skill we’re all born with, like rapping along to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or doing a Donald Trump impression. This leaves the movie closer to John Wick than The Raid, insofar as it’s a bad film. Sure it’s well-choreographed, but the dialogue will make you wish all the characters were mute.