Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015
Directed by George Miller.
Starring Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Rosie Huntington-Whitley, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton and Zoe Kravitz.
SYNOPSIS;
In a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, two rebels just might be able to restore order: Max, a man of action and of few words, and Furiosa, a woman of action who is looking to make it back to her childhood homeland.
Oh what a lovely day. Blistering heat sears through a desert outback as crisp blue skies pierce through its scorching heat, sand as yellow as gold blusters faintly across the plains. Then come the monster trucks, ravaging the pristine savannahs and severing the tranquil, serene surroundings with their dripping gasoline tanks and sweaty excesses, hard rock belting through every inch. Welcome to paradise as imagined by George Miller, and welcome to Fury Road.
An arduous, uneasy road to the big screen, but patience has been a true virtue for Miller and co, for as you watch the film (and by watch, we mean experience), every inch of Miller’s meticulous vision is carefully and precisely delivered, leading to quite easily the most impressive film of its kind for a decade. Yes, it is just that glorious.
Miller’s hysterical, frenetic slice of blockbuster is unrelenting: colours are vivid, sounds are piercing and ferocious, images are distorted just enough to make surroundings edgy and warped, but all the while being nothing short of breathless like all the best rollercoasters. It harks back to the original movies, but also James Cameron’s The Terminator in many regards: everything done on the move, pausing briefly for breathe in the pursuit of action cinema nirvana, which gets as close as anything of recent times.
Indeed, not since the truck-flip in The Dark Knight or Tom Cruise almost killing himself in Dubai for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol have you been able to hear a pin drop whilst watching such pieces of cinema, the audience absolutely flabbergasted at what they are witnessing. It is again testament to Miller’s fanatic pursuit of perfection and the gob-smacking feats of his stunt-team that the deliver some of the most awesome action set-pieces we have ever seen. Asthmatics be warned, inhalers may be required.
But while this may sound like a technical marvel with more than a hint of The Wachowski’s about it (namely style over than substance), Fury Road has both in spades, with a rag-tag group of survivors desperate for some light at the end of what is a very dark, grim tunnel, trying as best they might to escape both the masters of the universe (what’s left anyway) and the remnants of a murky time long past. Hope is the spur, and no amount of huge monster trucks and suitcases full of shotguns will kill it.
Leading the change is the superb Charlize Theron. Buzz-cutted, grissly and oiled-up, she excels in the role of Furiosa, adding pathos and gruff in equal measure in what is easily her best performance for a long while. Then there is Hardy, brilliant, impeccable Hardy, who once again showcases his immense talents as a performer. As mad as he ever was when he was known as Mel Gibson, Hardy’s Max is a more somber soul than you would imagine, but still able to throw the hardest of punches when he needs too. If the film wasn’t great enough, these two knock it even further out of the sand dunes.
It’s not perfect, as some of the crazy characters particularly some of the more “abstract” (Nicholas Hoult perhaps the most noteworthy) do grate in spots, and whilst Hardy is superb as Max, it’s surprising that we don’t delve into the character more than just a few brief flashbacks or hallucinations. But when the payoff for years of dedicated work is as extraordinary as this, any quibbles melt away into the scorching desert sky. All this from the director of Babe 2: Pig in the City. Blimey.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Scott Davis
https://youtu.be/8HTiU_hrLms?list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5
Originally published May 14, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
