In Joe Taslim’s latest film, The Furious, directed by Kenji Tanigaki, Taslim portrays Navin, an investigative journalist hot on the trail of a human trafficking organization that may be linked to the recent disappearance of his wife. After his cover is blown due to Wang Wei’s (Xie Miao) own investigation to locate his kidnapped daughter, Navin joins forces with Wang Wei to bring down this criminal organization at all costs before any more get drawn into its tangled, exploitative web.
Ahead of the theatrical release of The Furious, we spoke with Joe Taslim. During our conversation, we discussed his approach to the character, which is the first time that he’s played a “good guy,” and how his initial research led him to learn more about human trafficking, and how being in the film, but more specifically its subject matter, ultimately made him a better person.
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In stepping into the role of Navin, Taslim found research essential to understand who the character was. To do that, however, he first needed to study the world Navin was investigating: “Before I flew to Bangkok, I watched a lot of documentaries, especially involving child trafficking.”
Documentaries like Trafficked in Australia became the stepping stone into learning more about this reality. “It’s not like I didn’t know before, but by trying to understand Navin [through these] documentaries, I learned so much about what’s going on.”
For Joe Taslim, research was essential to better understand Navin’s motivation in The Furious.
In The Furious, we meet Navin deep in his investigations, in hopes of aiming to infiltrate this larger trafficking network that, at the start of the film, has spirited away his wife. Understanding the nature of this system made it easier for Taslim to find his character’s motivation: “Everybody is involved. Usually, the system is always corrupt in a place like that, and then from there, once I built enough understanding of this character, it was a lot easier for me to find motivation [for] why he fights, why he’s doing what he’s doing, why he sacrificed a lot.”
The journey for Navin in The Furious isn’t an easy one, and the deeper he becomes entwined in this dark, corrupt world, the more personal compromises he makes to get closer to reaching his goal. But what was essential was having an emotional and ethical starting point for Navin, one that viewers and Taslim himself could use to track his character’s emotional journey.
“The beautiful part [is] that journey of him being naive, trying to understand things that he probably thinks he knows, but he doesn’t until the end. In the beginning of the movie, you see him see everything positively,” Taslim explained. “He’s always in control, and he’s quite naive in terms of that. It teaches us a lot about humanity when we believe that we are in control, we know things, but once we lose something so precious to us, we could become one of [the monsters] easily.”
His work on The Furious inspired him to find ways to educate and spread awareness about trafficking.
One factor in Joe Taslim’s life that is precious is his kids, and in his work on The Furious, and the subsequent deep dive done researching child trafficking, its foundation in communities, and how widespread it is, made the movie have a major impact on him: “I have three kids. As a father, this movie is very personal for me,” Taslim shared. After his time working on the project, he dedicated himself to Plan International Indonesia to advance education in areas more vulnerable to trafficking.
“My job is to travel 2-3 times a year to those small villages, just to spread education and then spread awareness about it,” Taslim explained. “In the documentaries I watched, kids are sold by their parents, by the people they trust, their uncle, because of poverty, and then they didn’t know what was going on, because they’re little kids. By the time these people save those kids from that nightmare, from that hell, they don’t want to go because they think I don’t want to be in this facility, I don’t need to be recovered because this is the life that I know.”
While The Furious pulls no punches in how the clear villains of the film treat children, Joe Taslim shared that there was one scene so dark involving children that it did not make the final cut of the film: “I think it was too much. It’s a dramatic scene involving a child. We want to [show] that information, just enough [for] people to be aware, but we don’t want to expose [too much].” With the scenes featured in The Furious, more than enough was done to highlight what happens in the industry to children without going too far.
In the end, The Furious made Joe Taslim a better person.
Ultimately, playing Navin and being a part of The Furious was well worth the experience for Joe Taslim, who took away more than he could have imagined: “This is one of the best characters I ever played, because it has such a beautiful balance of dramatic storytelling, and then heavy action,” he explained. “This movie taught me so much [about how] to be a better person, and I’m grateful.”
At its heart, The Furious is more than just an action film. It offers a snapshot into child exploitation and trafficking that is real and present in today’s society. Joe Taslim’s Navin represents investigative journalists who are unafraid to pick apart and shed light on an industry that is nigh-impossible to bring down. And through Navin’s journey, many will see how difficult it is to maintain one’s hope and spirit when up against a behemoth supported by a corrupt system.
Get ready to get furious with Navin in The Furious, now in theaters. The film will arrive on Digital and on Demand July 7, 2026.
For the full unfiltered interview with Joe Taslim about The Furious, watch our video below.
