Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) - Review

Director: George Miller | Written by George Miller; Brendan McCarthy; Nico Lathouris

(Spoilers below)

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Haunted by his turbulent past, Mad Max believes the best way to survive is to wander alone. Nevertheless, he becomes swept up with a group fleeing across the Wasteland in a War Rig driven by an elite Imperator, Furiosa. They are escaping a Citadel tyrannized by the Immortan Joe, from whom something irreplaceable has been taken. Enraged, the Warlord marshals all his gangs and pursues the rebels ruthlessly in the high-octane Road War that follows.

- Warner Bros -

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Mad Max: Fury Road was something of a surprise to me. I remember seeing the trailers, hearing about the preceding instalments in the previously Mel Gibson-led franchise, and thinking 'this will be absolute shite. It cannot possibly be a good film'. I remember seeing it for the first time in a cinema vividly; it was a friends birthday and I had been dragged to a screening with him along with a few others. Not excited, I prepared for two-and-a-bit hours of boredom for which I luckily wasn't paying.

Two-and-a-bit hours later, I was begging to line up for another screening.

Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where water is scarce, Guzzolene, bullets and people are tradable commodities, and disease and deprivation stalk the land, Mad Max: Fury Road stars Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky, Charlize Theron as Furiosa, Nicholas Hoult as Nux and the late Hugh Keays-Byrne in his second outing as a Mad Max villain, this time playing the diseased Immortan Joe. The film, as simply as I can describe it, is a two hour chase. That's about it. Seriously.

Well, that's a bit disingenuous, the plot is actually quite heavy. Theron's Furiosa leads a merry chase with Immortan Joe's wives; The Splendid Angharad, Capable, Toast the Knowing, The Dag, and Cheedo the Fragile (Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Riley Keough, Zoe Kravitz, Abbey Lee and Courtney Eaton, respectively). Destined to lead a life of procreation, Furiosa helps them escape to the Green Place, a green and pleasant land of Furiosa's childhood, away from the grim future they were otherwise doomed to live out. Once Joe uncovers the ruse, he pursues his wives in an assortment of V8 monsters, aided by his sycophantic Warboys, who will follow him to 'the gates of Valhalla, shiny and chrome'. He is joined in his pursuit by fellow incel-men The People Eater (John Howard), the Bullet Farmer (Richard Carter) and their lackeys. There's some serious feminist undertones here, and in a way, the plight of Furiosa and the wives are the forefront of the story; fleeing their oppressive captors, with an uneasy alliance forming between the protagonists, Max is essentially a third wheel in his own movie, an anti-hero who is along for the ride. The inherent theme of the movie is the repetition of the protest; "we are not things", first seen scrawled across the walls of the Immortan citadel and repeated throughout the movie as a reminder that this is the thinking-viewer's action movie.

What is ingenious about the approach the movie takes is that it subverts the usual expectation that deep-thinking movies and frenetic action are mutually exclusive; I can't really explain the dichotomy that is the moral centre of the movie and the action against which it is presented, but it's an amazing combination; extremes are reached through brilliantly executed fights, chases and fuel-guzzling set pieces through to genuinely touching moments of quiet restraint that at first seem uneven but which strike a balance that is well thought out and by turns sublime.

While Fury Road marks a thematic shift from the road-warrior to leading lady that arguably began with the arrival of Tina Turner's Aunty Entity in Beyond Thunderdome, none of the series-defining action is missing here; quite the contrary, everything is magnified and expanded with stupefying results; it is the most frenetic, cacophonous, mind-blowing, most ear-splittingly brilliant instalment in the series. Favouring practical effects over CGI, and relying on stunts and wirework, Fury Road is a superb example of filmmaking at its finest; action scenes are coherent, with clear geography and a focus on clean, crisp action as opposed to mere disorientation, all the while being beautifully shot ( by John Seale) such that any one frame of the movie could be a wallpaper or hung up in an art gallery and not be at all out of place. All of this I say to sound intelligent, when all I need say is this film is badass and nothing else. Just... take a look at this scene:

This was directed by a 73 year-old - whoever came up with a mobile concert, complete with half a dozen war-drums, and a Doof Warrior with a whammy-bar controlled flamethrower built into his guitar deserves some kind of medal, if not an Oscar. Seriously, that this lost out to Spotlight (as good a movie as that was) for Best Picture in 2015 is just another example of movie snobbery that needs to be weeded out. And if you don't enjoy this, then sorry, but something is wrong with you...

I recently bought the soundtrack, composed by Tom Holkenborg (aka Junkie XL), on vinyl (in stunning yellow and blue marble, see below) and it is, other than hearing it in a cinema, the way to experience the music of the apocalypse. Thrashing guitars (sans flamethrower), drums that would sound at home amongst an earthquake and frenetic strings that could break your brain herald action set-pieces that are completely at odds against genuinely moving sections of brass and almost classically inspired string swells that punctuate character beats perfectly.

There's a reason Mad Max Fury Road is considered to be the best action movie of the 21st century, and in fact of all time; nothing else even comes close. It's brilliantly constructed, surprisingly deep, absolutely badass, featuring badass females, badass action and badass - craziness..., and six years on, I'm yet to find anything negative to say about it. Four instalments in, and Mad Max shows no signs of letting up. In fact, it's only getting better.

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Sam's Score: 9

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Mad Max: Fury Road is available on home media and most digital video stores.

All images © Warner Brothers