4/4 stars
The Mad Max series continues to improve with each passing entry. The first film was little more than a bit of roughneck ozploitation and lacked the sense of good fun that characterized the sequels. As the films have come along director George Miller hones his skill framing sustained sequences of nonstop action and in Fury Road he has brought his craft to perfection.
Mad Max: Fury Road is essentially a two hour chase picture; simply plotted and finely choreographed. Nonstop action can be quite dull in a lot of movies, but this movie has such brilliantly tuned pacing that my investment in its story never became fatigued. It takes a fine hand to make movies like this so good and this is one of the best of its kind; proudly standing among Terminator 2 or Aliens as one of the greatest action movies ever made.
The movie sees Mad Max (played by Tom Hardy replacing Mel Gibson) run afoul of a gang of bandits who take him prisoner to their Citadel, a massive canyon fortress ruled by an asthmatic albino warlord named Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). The ruler keeps his minions in religious awe of him and he controls access to a large reservoir of water by which he holds his subjects under his thumb. When his favored Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) defects and smuggles his harem of “breeders” out of the citadel Max is dragged along as Immortan goes after her to get them back. While on the chase Max is handcuffed to one of Immortan’s feral soldiers named Nux (Nicholas Hoult). In the ensuing battle Max escapes his captors along with Nux as an unwanted addition. He makes contact with the fleeing Furiosa and their relationship opens with mistrust and mismatched priorities, but then develops into a friendship and an enjoined quest to bring Immortan’s escaping harem to a place of safety. The girls (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoe Kravitz, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee, and Courtney Eaton) are a sensual lot of macguffins whose combination of little personality and minimal attire makes them offset whatever feminist and anti-slavery themes the movie is trying to convey. There is something puerile about fantasies of “grateful” rescued women in distress that appeals to the audience, and I feel attempting to find social commentary in how these women are presented here would be dishonest. The girls are eye-candy and little else; and the “people are not property” message is best found elsewhere. If this be a serious flaw, it is a flaw that is participated in by its actresses and its being a testosterone-fueled action romp. And perhaps it can be forgiven. Fury Road makes up for it with a tight camaraderie between its three central heroes and a highly entertaining narrative that marries road pictures (an under-acknowledged genre) with riveting special effects and action. The film is more escapist than philosophical and works perfectly on that level.
The car chase which makes up the majority of the film’s runtime is a spectacle of blood, dust, chrome, booming voices, and good old-fashioned grit. Barely a scene goes by without burning rubber and blowing sand. It’s an aggressive escapade of rust, gasoline, battered metal, and roaring engines. The film is high on bravado and violent energy. It’s post-nuke desert landscape creates a visually arresting palette of reds and yellows while its kinetic pace never stoops to repetition. The use of color in Fury Road is essential to its aesthetic and I can only look at the black-and-white version that was released as a meritless gimmick that fails to understand the proper uses of black-and-white and what it is for. This movie along with Logan (another great picture bastardized with a black-and white version) was made with color in mind and is best seen that way.
Tom Hardy, in a role requiring minimal dialogue, fills Max’s shoes well enough; but he doesn’t quite have the charismatic appeal of Gibson and Miller made the right choice in making Furiosa the film’s main perspective throughout the majority of it. Hardy is left to do the physical gruntwork of the Max character without talking too much to make the recast uncomfortably stand out.
While I would have been happy to see Mel Gibson take on the role again as an older Max, Fury Road still remains, to my mind, the best of the Mad Max series. Miller tried with the first one and succeeded with the next two. With this one, he perfected.
Perspectives on Film 