Review: Mad Max: Fury Road (Trevor)

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★★★

You know that sour taste you've had in your mouth since you first watched “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome?” Say goodbye! Thanks to George Miller’s long brewing follow up to the popular series “Mad Max: Fury Road,” you can finally rid yourself of that taste. This film will mercilessly smack your person with a force so strong you'll lose that little spot in your brain reminding you how cheesy that film was.

Gone are the battles inside an over-inflated jungle gym, and the long, arduous sequences of walking across a desert with kids. No, “Fury Road” gives us the Mad Max we want to see: unabashed and over-the-top high-octane chase sequences set against the backdrop of a nightmarish post-apocalyptic world. How much more over-the-top can you get than a guy standing on a platform attached to a vehicle playing a guitar hooked up to 20 feet of speakers and amps? 

Also gone is Mel Gibson in the title role. Instead, we have Tom Hardy (“The Dark Knight Rises”) taking the reigns of the legendary Road Warrior. When Max is captured by a group of bald and pasty-white desert dwellers, he’s taken to a place called the Citadel ruled by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) who harvests breast milk, breeds with his wives, and hoards a vast water supply from those who live there. Max is turned into a “blood bag” for one of the many War Boys of Joe, Nux (Nicholas Hoult).

Meanwhile, Joe is sending out Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) to drive a war rig across the desert to pick up some more oil, still a precious commodity in these films. What Joe soon learns is that Furiosa is running away from the Citadel and taking with her Joe’s five prized wives who want to escape his perverse clutches. Joe goes after her along with his army of war boys (including Nux with his blood bag Max attached to the front of his car like a hood ornament). What ensues is 120 absolutely relentless minutes of nightmarish absurdity that only the twisted mind of George Miller could dream up.

“Fury Road” is an complete and refreshing action film. At a time when every major studio in Hollywood is making action films to sell products outside of the actual film, Warner Bros. shows up with this masterpiece that proves big budgets and insane visions can still show off the artistic possibilities of film. There’s a lot of disturbing imagery coming at you from every direction which might turn away an unsuspecting viewer, but everything about it is very much in line with the original visions of Miller. It feels like a “Mad Max” movie every step of the way. It never feels like an idea hijacked by studio executives and twisted up in order to sell more t-shirts, Happy Meals, or anything else they could slap Max’s face on.

Miller has waited a long time to bring this to the screen and it's well worth the wait. There’s no nostalgia thrown back to the days of 80s cinema. “Fury Road” stands by itself, on its own very tall pedestal towering over its predecessors and over every other action movie of the last decade or more. Some 80s movies that go through the whole reboot process try to retain some of that same charm. But “Fury Road” isn't an 80s film, and Max isn't just a character of the time period anymore. Filmmaking technology is vastly improved since the "Thunderdome" days, and Miller uses it to his advantage.

The chase sequences are overblown but in a very cohesive way. Shot lengths are short to keep the pace of the film at a frantic level, but you’re never lost in a completely discombobulated mess of edits. A lot of thought and care went into constructing these sequences, from the actual filming to the masterful editing by Margaret Sixel and Jason Ballantine. Unlike the “Transformers” or “Fast & Furious” films - where all the edits are strung together in a way that completely lacks clarity - “Fury Road” is smart in it's construction. Never once do you feel lost or confused as to who’s fighting whom or who’s chasing whom. And Miller never relies on CGI to bring his film to life. "Fury Road" is filled with practical effects throughout the film giving it a much more realistic feel. CGI is only used to enhance the backgrounds, but never lead the action. I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to see a filmmaker in 2015 go out of his way to not use CGI to show epic action sequences. 

Hardy is a perfect Max. He doesn’t imitate Gibson’s iconic performance; he makes it his own. He plays the Road Warrior a bit more rough around the edges. The script doesn’t provide him much dialogue, which shouldn’t come as a surprise seeing as Max isn’t exactly the most loquacious of cinematic heroes. While Hardy is a terrific Max, it’s Theron’s Furiosa who owns this film. She is the hero leading these five wives to freedom. And the wives aren’t exactly the typical damsels-in-distress either. Each one is tough in her own way, especially Rosie Huntington-Whiteley who plays Joe's favorite wife, Splendid. But Theron commands this movie from the moment she steps on screen. Her character is Miller’s way of showing us that women in action films are completely capable of pulling the vast majority of the weight, and don’t have to be seen as a sexualized object of attraction in the eyes of the protagonist.

Gosh, how was Miller able to get away with all this with $150 million invested by a studio? Movies like “Fury Road” don’t happen in the studio system anymore. It’s all about additional marketing. There's nothing else to sell here, except for Junkie XL's incredible soundtrack, Blu-ray releases, and tickets to future “Mad Max” films. I don’t know how else to convey my praise for this film, other than saying that George Miller may have just made one of the finest action films of all time. I don't want to get ahead of myself; time will tell on that one. But when we think about the likes of “Die Hard” or “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” as some of the all time greats, I have to think we'll be talking about “Fury Road” in the same breath one day. What Miller has done here is the work of a cinematic visionary at the top of his game. “Fury Road” is a masterwork, the kind of spectacle that screens in movie theaters around the world were meant to showcase. Too many filmmakers these days are making movies and releasing a chaotic mess to the public. Who cares, as long as the studios can sell toys, right? Thank God George Miller has returned. And he brings with him a new gold standard.