Mad Max: Fury Road [MA]

In a dying, desert world, there is one human instinct that matters: survival. Max Rockatansky is a man of action and few words, haunted by the death of his wife and daughter, who finds himself the prisoner of a tribe of desert people. He finally escapes during an epic chase of a group of women, the wives of the tribe’s leader, who have escaped with a plan to travel to ‘the green place’: a place of life, hope, and redemption. Soon Max is on the road with them and the entire army of the desert tribe is right on their tail, determined to stop at nothing until they’ve chased them down. 

Writer/producer/director George Miller proves that he is still the titan of Australian cinema with this epic, absolutely EPIC, reinstalment of his original 1979 dystopian classic. For those who are worried about watching this one without having seen any of these others, the only one you really need to see is the first one, Mad Max, as this one takes place after the events of that film. I haven’t seen Road Warrior or Beyond Thunderdome, but I still completely was at grips with what was going in here. Despite coming under fire from mens’ activists groups, which I’ll go into a little later, Mad Max: Fury Road stands as a stunning piece of modern cinema that remains incredibly true to its original source material in terms of its uniqueness and cinematic awesomeness. Seriously, this film is AMAZING! 

In a dying, desert world, there is one human instinct that matters: survival. Max Rockatansky is a man of action and few words, haunted by the death of his wife and daughter, who finds himself the prisoner of a tribe of desert people. He finally escapes during an epic chase of a group of women, the wives of the tribe’s leader, who have escaped with a plan to travel to ‘the green place’: a place of life, hope, and redemption. Soon Max is on the road with them and the entire army of the desert tribe is right on their tail, determined to stop at nothing until they’ve chased them down. 

Ok, first thing that is absolutely awesome about this flick: it does not rely on the special effects to give it breadth. Whilst a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of modern adaptations of classics such as this overdo with the shiny bells and whistles and smoke machines of computer graphic wonder that we have in this day and age, Fury Road was pretty much entirely authentic; the only CG really being the enhanced explosions, probably the captivating beautiful dust storm, and Charlize Theron’s missing arm. The cars, because essentially the entire thing is one big fuck-off car chase, are all crazy-awesome inventions: a chance for the art department and tech teams to just let their hair down and go absolutely berserk! And it was awesome! I mean, come on, we’ve got a tank made out of a Cadillac… A CADILLAC! In the same vein, costume and makeup achievements were above and beyond with the direness of the post-apocalyptic world really hammered home in deformities and really unnerving appearances of the different desert tribes. 

As I mentioned before, this movie came under fire a bit from mens’ activist groups; the reason being, I think, that men are depicted as the horrible and evil villains chasing down the poor, vulnerable, beautiful, fair women. At the heart of the argument though, I think fans of the original Mad Max movies just got a bit peeved that a movie that was originally all about manliness and machoness got turned around in the favour of women here. Max, essentially, is a by-line, he’s not the central story at all and, whilst he does play the role of the stiff and silent hero/antihero type, the movie is really all about the women. 

Charlize Theron as Furiosa, this wonderful, strong, incredible Amazon of a heroine is very much the star of the show, and she delivers an amazing performance. 

Tom Hardy as Max is the strong and silent type, attempting to fill the shoes of Mel Gibson. Hardy does a very good job, bringing something cute and sensitive to the sun-and-dust-hardened character. He makes for a very competent action star, but doesn’t get graced with a lot of dialogue. 

The other thing that I really loved about this movie was how it didn’t deviate attention from the soundtrack, but worked in complete tandem with it. Most films, especially action movies, these days tend to leave the soundtrack in the backseat when it really should be up front next to the driver! Fury Road was one of the first action movies in a while where I actually noticed the music and I really appreciated that! 

Visually, this movie is absolutely incredible and it makes for a very stimulating and engaging viewing experience with bouts of captivation and repulsion being happily thrown at you here and there: it’s wonderful. The cinematography is a partiluar knockout, with spasms of black and white as well as a extreme sepia tones being thrown into the mix to really create this sense of a post-apocalyptic world. The lighting can be argued as being pretty harsh, but it works brilliantly! 

Starring Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Josh Helman, Nathan Jones, Zoe Kravitz, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton, John Howard, Angus Sampson, Iota, Richard Carter, Jennifer Hagan, Melissa Jaffer, and Megan Gale, Mad Max: Fury Road is an awesome movie that’s packed with action, epic car chases, drama, betrayal, violence, and more action. It’s an absolutely EPIC piece of modern cinema!