Willpower is one of humanity’s greatest tools. While some may not have much, those who learn of its advantages and use them go far in life. Willpower is partially how drug addicts get clean, how firefighters and medics/doctors save lives and homes, and how anybody pushes through burdensome workloads they’d rather blow. The Furious (火遮眼)—a rambunctiously high-octane thrill through weather- and man-beaten alleys, rust-brown polls, and endless street cracks of Bangkok, Thailand where criminals control young lives and fates—demonstrates willpower’s limitless potential. Xie Miao plays Wang Wei, a mute repairman and electrician whose only purpose is to make his daughter, Rainy (Yang Enyou), happy and keep her safe from the world’s countless dangers. Unfortunately for them, danger doesn’t wait: Rainy gets lured by a dirt-covered boy into getting kidnapped and thrown in the back of a garbage truck. Equally unfortunate for these criminals, though, is that Wang holds a nasty secret: he’s highly skilled in beatdowns and killing, whether that be with a sledgehammer, a chair, his knuckles, or gravity. As Wang relentlessly chases the kid-stealing bastards, he befriends an unlikely but fellow loss-driven soul in investigative journalist Navin (Joe Taslim), who lost his wife to the same organization before the film. With even the police hanging back, Wang and Navin have nothing but each other, their determination, and interpersonal devastation to drive their unstoppable rage against these twisted kidnappers.

The Furious (not to be confused with the Fast & Furious car saga) is what Liam Neeson’s Taken trilogy desperately wanted to be: a non-stop, meaningful action spectacle with a solid thematic backbone and character work. It’s not perfect—a better balance between development, abstract ideas, and bloody punches is needed, as stuffing it all in at the beginning and having continuous action sequences that often exceed ten minutes gets slightly tedious—but there’s plenty here for The Furious’s protagonists to feel meaty and for the narrative to be justifiably dark. It subverts the kidnapping action trope, filling predictable story beats with engagingly natural evolution and weight that helps alleviate the basic-ness of the premise. Wang Wei starts as essentially a hermit. Fearful of the dangers he (but no one else) sees around every corner, he keeps his daughter close at all times, even at work, and maintains a relatively sheltered, isolated lifestyle. Clearly traumatized by the recent, off-screen passing of Rainy’s mother—”Could you tell me the story of [how] you and mother [met]?” Rainy asks at one point, to no real reply—he refuses to allow anything else harmful to enter his or Rainy’s lives. Such danger-necessitated introversion is so extreme that even Rainy gets fed up with his strict, lonely ways: “How can you live [or survive] when you’re so scared of everything?” One may not expect a man who’s so “scared of everything” to maim dozens personally as easily as he does, or at least without some struggle or remorse. But when the one last thing he has is gone—the one thing that also drives his very existence is taken by those purely greedy, sick, and evil—the true limits of this self-proclaimed “ordinary father” reveal themselves to the world and his ugly perpetrators. It’s no wonder, then, why Rainy can hold her own against a couple of these creeps with nothing but a credit card-shaped, sharpened piece of metal: it’s in the blood.

Of course, Wang Wei doesn’t do this all alone. His amoral brutality is both amplified and contrasted by Navin’s muscle and slightly warmer conscience. Having been “undercover… for months” to drag these same perps down after his fellow journalist wife disappeared investigating them, he’s had more time to ruminate on strategy. Even when Navin and Wang’s meeting turns hostile, he’s the one who realizes Wang’s purpose and declares something of an alliance: “I’m not one of them. You’re looking for someone, too.” As the pair learn to trust their shared longing for their taken loved ones and evenly matched strength and agility—leading to various successful assaults on different criminal compounds in a matter of hours—Wang also sees the value of justice in his vengeful rescue quest beyond saving his daughter. When they find other victims, some of whom “never had a home” because of how young they were taken, the stark moral contrast between Wang and Navin shines brightest. Still caring only for his daughter, Wang initially refuses to engage further, while Navin doesn’t hesitate to do precisely the opposite. Navin demonstrates to Wang, perhaps for the first time in the latter’s life, the true solution to his problem: the only way to live in such a scary world is to face and fix it. Vengeance on its own results in nothing more than further bloodshed and regret, but as Navin says, spinning his wedding ring, “If you’re brave enough to change yourself, you can change your world, Wang Wei.” To really make him and his daughter content, he has to honor the past, embrace the present and its tough choices (ie, killing the rest and saving all the victims), and open himself up to the hopefully good changes to come. Fortunately, after hours of countless—and mesmerizingly choreographed—beatdowns against ruthless child traffickers, the rest of the world and its near-infinite issues probably feel a lot more approachable.

The Furious is as much a tight and punchy vengeance thriller as it is a study of justice’s insanely tough necessity. In a time when entire rich elite-named islands can be easily dedicated to grotesque, traumatizing practices such as child molestation without much consequence, perhaps the world needs more Navins and Wangs. Violence aside, may more global citizens understand how enraged they should be at the needless, secret suffering millions face, as The Furious so swiftly demonstrates. Combined with a mildly intriguing corrupt cop subplot, ground-pounding performances, and a trash heap of great-to-hate villains, The Furious is both an entertainingly breakneck kidnap-homicide case and ethically testy action flick.

In theaters now—get tickets Apple Cinemas Cambridge, Showcase Cinemas, and some local AMCs