Veronica Ngô presents “Furies,” a prequel to the 2019 Vietnamese-language film “Furie.” Although a prequel, the film follows an entirely different pattern and moves to Ho Chi Minh City in the 90s. Violent and savage, the film is just over two hours long and packed with fight sequences that will leave your jaw on the floor and sometimes have you leave your brain behind too. It also releases at a great time to accompany “John Wick 4” for a weekend full of fury and bloodshed.
Spoilers Ahead
Plot Synopsis: What Happens In ‘Furies’?
The film opens with a dark scene of violence, with dozens of men dead on the floor and a young woman being shot. This is the story of that young woman, Bi. As a child, Bi was brought up by a single mother who engaged in prostitution to make money to support them. Unfortunately, when Bi was a teenager, one of her mother’s clients assaulted her when her mother wasn’t around. Finally, her mother did arrive, and while trying to save Bi, she herself got thrown at a wall and wounded in the head. In a rage, Bi ended up killing the man and setting their houseboat on fire. With her mother dead and no home, Bi moved to the big city to survive on the streets. After a hard time stealing and sleeping in the streets, Bi is found by Jacqueline or Lin, who then takes her under her wing and shows her the ropes of becoming a vengeful assassin.
Lin introduces Bi to a couple of other young girls who have had traumatic experiences like Bi, named Thanh and Hong, both of whom have been trained by Lin before. Hong is a cheerful and feminine girl who lives her best life in whatever situation she’s put in, whereas Thanh is the brooding one who wears all black and minds her own business. It’s an interesting mix of women who are extremely different but get along like a house on fire together. While skeptical at first, Thanh takes a shine to Bi after seeing her fight for her life. Bi finds a family with these two women, but there’s something in the back of her mind stopping her from completely accepting this life. Lin has been working hard to train these girls so they can bring down the drug and sex-trafficking empire of the city, led by “Mad Dog” Hai. Lin uses inside men and strategic tactics to isolate Hai from his team by killing them off one by one. A found family and action ensue as the three girls navigate their way into Hai’s empire, cutting his legs off. Unfortunately, Hong is killed in the crossfire, and things start to go downhill from there. So instead of seeing a triumphant victory for Lin, Bi, and Thanh, who saved the young girls of the city, why does this film end in tragedy?
‘Furies’ Ending Explained – Do The Girls Defeat ‘Mad Dog’? What Happens To Jacqueline?
They say power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this quote happens to define the concluding act of this film. While Hong is fighting for her life, Bi finds out that there is a history between Hai and Lin. She is not saving the girls but exacting revenge on Hai for killing her husband five years ago. Bi is furious with Lin for not telling them about her past and pretending this was all about saving other young girls from terrible plights. After all that they’ve been through, Lin still wants to follow through with her plan after Hong has died. Bi agrees because of Thanh’s trust in Lin. Now, Lin chooses to fight alongside them in the final battle against Hai. She is able to deceive him by using his right-hand man- Long Bo Da and feigning death. Bo Da has been two-timing Hai by helping Lin the whole time. He also had a romantic relationship with Hong.
To avenge Hong’s death, Long murders the man who killed her, leaving Hai alone to defend himself. Now that he has nobody on his side, Hai begs Lin to forgive him, saying it was another guy’s idea to kill her husband. Lin is more interested in why they killed her five-year-old son, to which Hai says it was an accident. In the middle of all of this, Bi and Thanh are severely injured. Lin kills Long because he didn’t stop Hai from killing her husband in the first place, leaving Bi and Thanh worried for their lives. Lin puts a bullet in Hai’s head finally after talking about making the turf her own. She is now power-hungry and will not stop at anything, including killing the two girls who did everything in their power to help her. She asks Thanh to kill Bi because Bi never trusted or accepted Lin. Thanh is, of course, incapable of killing Bi, who is now like a little sister to her, but predictably as she points the gun at Lin, she’s shot dead by Lin herself. This leads up to Bi and Lin’s final fight sequence of the film, where they try desperately to kill each other, bringing us back to the first scene of the film.
Finally, it is Bi who successfully kills Lin but falls unconscious herself. When the police arrive, they find her still breathing, and she’s later put into prison for 15 years. This is when it is revealed that Bi has renamed herself Thanh after her dear friend. Coincidentally, Thanh is the name of the woman that runs the trafficking business in the film “Furie,” meaning that all Bi worked hard to fight against engulfs her in the end, leaving us to face the fact that no matter how hard you try, if your life is supposed to be filled with tragedy, as Bi mentions at the beginning of the film, it will continue to be so.
