Inside Bangkok Set of Tanigaki Kenji’s Martial Arts Film

The “police station” built in a few days from an old retail unit in Surawong, central Bangkok, is so realistic from the outside that several pedestrians stop and stare, perhaps wondering if this is the place they should come to report some petty crime in the adjacent Patpong red light district.

Inside, the building’s temporary reality as a set for the martial arts action movie “The Furious” is quickly revealed. Among the scuffed and rusting gray metal desks, the ground floor has all the trappings of an active and dow- at-heel cop shop. There are notices on every wall: wanted posters, mission statements, job ads and regulations. But the giveaway — revealing that the film is set in an unnamed part of Southeast Asia, rather than any specific country — is that the background verbiage is largely in English. And that in between the police paraphernalia there are piles of lighting and camera equipment being readied for the next take.

Being used for 18 days of a three-month shoot, the police station is a key location for “The Furious,” a revenge action movie that veteran producer Bill Kong (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Hero”) hopes will serve as a powerful reminder that Asian martial arts films can still rival the high-tech thrills of their modern Hollywood counterparts.

Kong has assembled an impressive pan-Asian cast of actors and fighters and built the movie around Tanigaki Kenji, a Japanese action choreographer-turned-director and associate of Donnie Yen. Tanigaki has spent so much of his career in Hong Kong that the dominant language on his set is Cantonese, ahead of Thai, Japanese or English.

The day that Variety visited the production, the station was being used for a drama scene that will appear in the last section of the finished picture. As two inmates share their thoughts, the scene represents a calm before a final storm. Reverse angles are the order of the day, and, despite the lack of space, the setup calls for three cameras.

Kong explains that, according to the script, the finale may run for 15-20 minutes in total and that all but three minutes of those will be hardcore action. “But you need these drama scenes between the fighting to let the audience breathe. To keep them relating to the characters,” Kong says before adding: “I could never be a director.”

The actual director, Tanigaki, is nowhere to be seen until he is finally spotted in a corner on the ground floor. He is crouching on a low plastic stool, motionless and staring intently into a bank of monitors that are fringed with antennae and wifi connectors.

The scene plays for a minute. The actors shuffle around their adjacent cells — smoking, stretching out — and then they engage. Two minutes in, they are speaking their lines. But the dialogue is inaudible to anyone not with them in the cell or wearing headphones. Finally, Tanigaki calls “cut” in the Hong Kong style.

Immediately, the noise level spikes and Tanigaki springs out from his hiding place, as mobile now as he was rigid before. He has a heavily-wrinkled smile, big hair and struts rapidly around on footballer’s legs. His first ports of call are the stunt guys and actors.

Sometimes Tanigaki pulls out his mobile phone to show them footage from earlier rehearsals or previous takes, demonstrating exactly how he wants things to be done. Other times, he’s cheerily acting out the moves. He is reminiscent of a Japanese version of Jackie Chan, and it is easy to imagine him doing a full prat fall at any moment.

Tanigaki explains that he favors the long takes because it allows time for movie magic to happen — and it’s not like the three-camera footage is going to go unedited.

“Jeeja [Yanin] or Joe Taslim can usually get what is required on the first take. But I’m always looking for miracles and to do more takes. Sometimes they happen,” he tells Variety.

Even with an experienced cast used to performing action scenes, Tanigaki knows that he’s asking a lot. “In a normal action movie, we use stunt doubles. Here it is all actor on actor,” he says. “The preparation we did was enormously useful. The choreography makes it look natural, unscripted, when we go in front of the cameras, but I still like to tune up the moves on-set.”

The helmer says rehearsals have “helped build trust” which “makes things safer” for elaborate stunts. “We do things that look dangerous on screen, but in reality are not,” he says.

That does not appear to reassure co-producer Todd Brown, who is visiting the set for the first time and is dismayed by the solidity of some of the police station’s facilities. “It doesn’t look as if much is designed to break away,” Brown says.

Tanigaki is still grinning at his earlier explanation. He’s also dead serious. “I said before that we wanted to push the boundaries of a MA film. Two-thirds of the way through, I’m satisfied that we are doing that,” he says.

Tanigaki and Kong are as one in their praise of the Thai workers. “The Thai crews are very professional and integrate with the Japanese stunt team,” Tanigaki says.

Kong concurs, adding that the friendliness and flexibility of local crews have helped Thailand become a popular destination for international film projects. There is also a posse of Thai actors hired in many cases to perform as henchmen and get beaten up by the core cast.

With the production wrapping on schedule in late July and close to the “sub $20 million” official budget, the next moves will be performed by Brown and his colleagues at XYZ Films. They aim to give the film a proper sales launch during the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival, with delivery of the finished picture in 2025.

Brown says a buyers meeting will take place in Toronto, “to which Netflix and others are invited.” “Obviously, we are targeting a theatrical release, but we also have a takeout price in mind if a streamer really wants to take the film off our hands,” he says.

Delivery is scheduled for the second quarter of 2025, but the producer says premiering at Berlin Film Festival is not out of the picture. “The festival used to be a great platform for this kind of movie, and I hope it has not forgotten its heritage,” Brown says.