Mad Max: Fury Road - MAD Indeed!

Mad Max: Fury Road movie review

 

I am no fan of the Mad Max movie franchise, but I have seen the 1st Mad Max and 1/2 of Mad Max 2 & 3 on television. For as long as 30 years, several people last saw Mad Max on the big screen when Beyond Thunderdome was released, and a lot of changes have happened since then. Not just in what passes for action franchise movie-making today, but also in the world of the post-apocalyptic anti-hero himself. Mel Gibson, the former titular character with the black leather jacket with a tragic past, has now been replaced with English actor Tom Hardy in what is now an ageless role.

When we first meet Hardy’s Max, he’s seemingly stuck somewhere between The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome -- still in command of his iconic supercharged V8 from the former film, but also sporting the long locks of the latter. A chase begins almost immediately -- a mere appetizer for the feature-length pursuit that makes up the guts of Fury Road -- and results in Max being held captive in the Citadel, the mountaineous headquarters of the ghastly Immortan Joe.

Instead of execution, Max's punishment must be more severe!

The ambiguous backstory has been a hallmark for George Miller's series, and this enables him to reset Fury Road effectively. Is this a remake, a reboot, a sequel, or a fusion of all three? It does not matter at that point. The world painted here is reminiscent of that imagined in the previous films, and at the same next level. It took the evolution of the End of the World to its next logical, jarring, yet at times beautiful place.

Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa is a high-ranking warlord of Immortan Joe’s army. The protagonist of the movie, she goes on the run from Joe alongside his Five Wives on a specially-designed War Rig. Max’s equal in physicality, driving skills, and tortured past, the one-armed Furiosa stands at the forefront of a cast full of imposing female characters that also includes “The Wives” -- and a group of gun-wielding, dirt-bike riding grannies who almost steal the show. Of course, Miller has often excelled in such portrayals.
 

Decent movie and all, but someone should've told Charlize she had sh*t on her face the whole time.

What I loved the most about the film is the eye-gouging action sequences, so this means audiences are witnessing non-CGI visual effects on the screen. From several cars crashing and flying in the air to a tanker truck exploding right in front of your face, there is nothing more that anybody could demand for in this action flick! Combined with the feral Australian outback setting and the post-apocalyptic ambience, it is a rollercoaster ride filled with mad action, mad violence, and mad intensity.

Fury Road frequently undermines such expectations. Not that any Mad Max fan would anticipate (or want) romance for the character, but Miller works hard to keep the viewer off-balance in general. A particular arc involving one of The Wives sets up a storytelling trope, then does a 180-degree turn away from that, then sets up another trope before doing yet another 180. And this is all capped off by one of the secondary villains, Nathan Jones' perfectly named Rictus Erectus, delivering a moment of genuine pathos as he yells plaintively into the wind. Brilliant.
  

What a lovely day indeed!

I do wonder how the typical moviegoer will react to Fury Road’s unwillingness to play by 2015’s mainstream multiplex rules. But the trailers for this film have not lied; the action is insane, even more so when one considers that so much of it was achieved through practical means, and that a large part of the movie is made up of that central chase.

The over-the-top stunts and eccentric characters and designs are all hugely important to Fury Road, as are the troubled figures like Max himself and Furiosa, but it’s the overriding sense of the film’s uniqueness. Like the world it creates, it is a thing of beautiful brutality.
Mad Max: Fury Road, from my perspective, undoubtedly and definitely deserves an outstanding rating of 9/10!