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Mad Max: Fury Road
After our previous week’s venture into summer action, I was not that enthused about another film of that sort, but the stars were aligned right, so we saw the new Mad Max movie.* Going way back, I recall that The Road Warrior was the first movie I recall that mastered the sort of hyperkinetic, FX heavy action that is the standard fare of summer blockbusters, so this was sort of a trip down memory lane.* It’s the same post-nuke, ruined world in which Australia is a savage desert, populated by warped maniacs, always on the prowl for gasoline to power their war-wagons.* Max (Tom Hardy) is still the burned out, monosyllabic maverick, loyal only to himself, but once again he finds himself dragged into taking sides.* In this episode Max finds himself on the side of a group of women (breeders as they are called), “stolen” from a self-inflated (literally) bully-dictator, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Burne).* Joe is the ruler of a colony of warped (mutant?) sycophants who nearly worship him, in return for brief gushes of water doled out from a subterranean well.* Meanwhile Max has been captured and is being used as an involuntary blood donor for a sick “War Boy” (Nicolas Hoult), mounted on the front of his vehicle like a trophy.
In yet another “meanwhile”, Furiosa (Charlize Theron) has liberated a group of breeders and is setting off in an armored vehicle in order to reach a green space that might be out there somewhere in the desert.* Not surprisingly, the chase ensues, with Joe marshalling all of his forces to retrieve his breeders.* Max is attached to the one of the vehicles as a blood supply and is an unwilling part of Joe’s War Boy army.* When Max gets loose, he links up with the women and helps them in their quest for escape.* Most of the movie, like other Max movies, is an extended chase scene, full of dust, violence, exploding gasoline, flying trucks and growling, hyper-testosteroned warriors dying like flies in order to get Joe’s breeders back to him.* Max and his new crew are having nothing of that.* They meet up with a group of older women and one disillusioned War Boy and become a new crew, off to some different end rather than being with Joe and his heavy-metal war boys.
If all this sounds completely over-the-top…it is, but you have to ask yourself, just WHAT are you doing in a Mad Max movie if you don’t want it to be over-the-top.* In a summer that will probably see more frantic action movies, I doubt that any of them will beat this.* It is violence, explosions and carnage, pretty much from beginning to end.* It never lets up for more than a moment.* As for acting, it’s pretty much all physical, very few sentences exceed 4 words and most consist of grunts, shrieks, roars and growls. *There’s not much verbal content here.
The other question…does it work?* I have to give it a rousing yes.* George Miller directs, as he did back at the beginning (Road Warrior was also Mel Gibson’s introduction to American audiences) and he really nails it in this one.* There’s very little plot to speak of, little exposition, mainly just a setup to a wild ride.* Miller is one strange director with a Jekyl-Hyde record.* Having a fairly small number of movies to his credit (15), most of what he has done is either hyper-violent, or something like Babe and Happy Feet….a bi-polar director and writer.* Most of the movie seems to have relied on carefully staged stunts and non-digital FX, without an over-reliance on a huge staff of animators (like The Avengers?).* I’m amazed that half of the cast wasn’t killed doing these stunts, but most of them are still breathing.* The actors are as good as they need to be, but this really is not an actor’s movie.* I did like (as I almost always do), Tom Hardy as Max.* He’s great in these sort of physical movies and manages to convey a lot with a scowl and a grunt.
I liked this a lot more than I expected.* It’s been 36 years since the first Mad Max movie.* It was so Australian that when I saw it a few years later (after the US release of Road Warrior), that it needed subtitles.* I didn’t think the Max franchise would still work but it did.* I did not see the movie in 3D, so I can’t comment on whether that worked, but the visuals in the 2D version were excellent.* The acrobatic action is hard to believe.* If you are going to see one action movie this week, this would be my choice.* I liked it much better than Avengers (a middling yawner IMO).* This is a movie that makes extreme violence work.* Be sure to take your heart meds before you go and strap yourself in for a completely insane chase, right up to the end.
After our previous week’s venture into summer action, I was not that enthused about another film of that sort, but the stars were aligned right, so we saw the new Mad Max movie.* Going way back, I recall that The Road Warrior was the first movie I recall that mastered the sort of hyperkinetic, FX heavy action that is the standard fare of summer blockbusters, so this was sort of a trip down memory lane.* It’s the same post-nuke, ruined world in which Australia is a savage desert, populated by warped maniacs, always on the prowl for gasoline to power their war-wagons.* Max (Tom Hardy) is still the burned out, monosyllabic maverick, loyal only to himself, but once again he finds himself dragged into taking sides.* In this episode Max finds himself on the side of a group of women (breeders as they are called), “stolen” from a self-inflated (literally) bully-dictator, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Burne).* Joe is the ruler of a colony of warped (mutant?) sycophants who nearly worship him, in return for brief gushes of water doled out from a subterranean well.* Meanwhile Max has been captured and is being used as an involuntary blood donor for a sick “War Boy” (Nicolas Hoult), mounted on the front of his vehicle like a trophy.
In yet another “meanwhile”, Furiosa (Charlize Theron) has liberated a group of breeders and is setting off in an armored vehicle in order to reach a green space that might be out there somewhere in the desert.* Not surprisingly, the chase ensues, with Joe marshalling all of his forces to retrieve his breeders.* Max is attached to the one of the vehicles as a blood supply and is an unwilling part of Joe’s War Boy army.* When Max gets loose, he links up with the women and helps them in their quest for escape.* Most of the movie, like other Max movies, is an extended chase scene, full of dust, violence, exploding gasoline, flying trucks and growling, hyper-testosteroned warriors dying like flies in order to get Joe’s breeders back to him.* Max and his new crew are having nothing of that.* They meet up with a group of older women and one disillusioned War Boy and become a new crew, off to some different end rather than being with Joe and his heavy-metal war boys.
If all this sounds completely over-the-top…it is, but you have to ask yourself, just WHAT are you doing in a Mad Max movie if you don’t want it to be over-the-top.* In a summer that will probably see more frantic action movies, I doubt that any of them will beat this.* It is violence, explosions and carnage, pretty much from beginning to end.* It never lets up for more than a moment.* As for acting, it’s pretty much all physical, very few sentences exceed 4 words and most consist of grunts, shrieks, roars and growls. *There’s not much verbal content here.
The other question…does it work?* I have to give it a rousing yes.* George Miller directs, as he did back at the beginning (Road Warrior was also Mel Gibson’s introduction to American audiences) and he really nails it in this one.* There’s very little plot to speak of, little exposition, mainly just a setup to a wild ride.* Miller is one strange director with a Jekyl-Hyde record.* Having a fairly small number of movies to his credit (15), most of what he has done is either hyper-violent, or something like Babe and Happy Feet….a bi-polar director and writer.* Most of the movie seems to have relied on carefully staged stunts and non-digital FX, without an over-reliance on a huge staff of animators (like The Avengers?).* I’m amazed that half of the cast wasn’t killed doing these stunts, but most of them are still breathing.* The actors are as good as they need to be, but this really is not an actor’s movie.* I did like (as I almost always do), Tom Hardy as Max.* He’s great in these sort of physical movies and manages to convey a lot with a scowl and a grunt.
I liked this a lot more than I expected.* It’s been 36 years since the first Mad Max movie.* It was so Australian that when I saw it a few years later (after the US release of Road Warrior), that it needed subtitles.* I didn’t think the Max franchise would still work but it did.* I did not see the movie in 3D, so I can’t comment on whether that worked, but the visuals in the 2D version were excellent.* The acrobatic action is hard to believe.* If you are going to see one action movie this week, this would be my choice.* I liked it much better than Avengers (a middling yawner IMO).* This is a movie that makes extreme violence work.* Be sure to take your heart meds before you go and strap yourself in for a completely insane chase, right up to the end.