Mad Max, Fury Road

Year : 2015

Genre : Action 

Let’s throw this out there first of all. If you like your films quiet, contemplative, and profound, then ‘Fury Road’ is definitely not the film for you.

 I can openly admit to never seeing any of the Mel Gibson originals back in the 80’s, so I came to Fury Road with a blank slate. Set in a barren post apocalyptic Australia, Tom Hardy from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, and soon to open biopic of the Krays, ‘Legend’ plays Max Rockatansky. Whilst on the run from the War Boys (a group of bald scavengers riddled with radiation sickness led by Hugh Keays Byne), Hardy’s Max joins forces with Charlize Theron, also on the run from the War Boys convoy. She is trying to smuggle a small group of concubines back to her place of birth. Together they must outrun the War Boys, or destroy the convoy. Whichever comes first.

 Strip everything away and at its core, ‘Fury Road’ is a two hour car chase. There are several things about it though, that raise its bar well above the baseline that it so easily could have ended up being. Modern audiences are used to breathtaking CGI. It is no longer the spectacle that is was ten years ago. Depth of character, and to be more specific, characters that audiences actually care about are what separate modern Summer blockbusters apart from one another. It is in this aspect, that ‘Fury Road’ succeeds. We already know that Charlize Theron can hold her own on the big screen after seeing her play female serial killer Aileen Wuornos in 2003’s ‘Monster’. Her Ripley-esque Imperator Furiosa heroine is given just as much screen time as Hardy himself and if anything, becomes the protagonist of the film after it’s half way point. It makes a refreshing change to see a strong female lead alongside an equally strong male, and Theron is one of the few Hollywood actresses who has the big stage gravitas to carry off the part.

 The chase scenes between the War Boys and Hardy / Theron are the bread and butter of this film though, and Australian writer / director George Miller’s radial camerawork is exceptional during these parts. If there ever was a movie that truly deserved the ‘rollercoaster ride’ label, it would be this one. Accompanied by a booming soundtrack, they are very much reminiscent of Spielberg’s camera work in the Indiana Jones movies. You probably won’t see much better this year.

 So is there anything to find fault with? Well yes. The first fifteen minutes of the film is are a bit non descriptive, as audiences are thrown in head first with very little explanation as to why Max is where he is, or how he came to be. Some might say that Hardy’s character is a bit too melancholic for his own good, and needed a couple of comedic moments to balance the scales.

 Also, the casting of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Why?! Have the producers never seen a Michael Bay film? It was just too much of a contrast to Theron’s Furiosa, and felt unrealistic given the film post nuclear war backdrop.

 A little bit more plot explaining the background, and this would have been a five.

 Four stars.