Movie Review: Mad Max: Fury Road

George Miller (Mad Max) revs up for maximum car-nage in his franchise reboot, Mad Max: Fury Road.


Tom Hardy (Warrior) takes over the lead role (made famous by Mel Gibson way back in 1979) of Max Rockatansky.  Max is a drifter in a post-apocalyptic wasteland who gets taken by a band of cultish loonies led by resident psychopath Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays, Mad Max).  Joe controls the local population by controlling the limited water supply.  Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron, Devil's Advocate) is sick of his reign, so she steals his five breeding slaves wives to try to find a better place for all of them.  Max gets caught up in the ordeal and helps them out.  Armies of crazy cars and psychopaths are after them.  They find another unlikely companion in one of those crazies, Nux (Nicholas Hoult, X-Men: Days of Future Past).  Mayhem ensues....yada yada yada.


Let's be real, the plot doesn't matter in this film.  Hell, even Max himself is not super important to the overall story.  This should have been subtitled Furiosa Road.  It is just as much Theron's movie as it is Hardy's.  But I digress.  What does matter is everything else.  I have to preface by saying that on a re-watch of the original Mad Max Trilogy, I found them to be not that great.  There were long stretches of boring in them, broken up by some fun action.  It has been 30 years since Thunderdome, and in that time George Miller must have really been thinking about what parts of those movies did and did not work.  I have to say, if you are going to reboot a franchise, then this is how you do it.  What did work in the old films was the crazy characters and the world he created, and of course the action.  In Fury Road, he rebuilt that world, and when the insanity started from scene one, it didn't let up for the next two hours.


Most post-apocalyptic films are portrayed in bleak, drab colors.  Miller does something different here.  It is set in a desert wasteland, but it is bold, colorful, and beautiful to look at.  There are bright, fiery explosions over and over.  The vehicles are imaginative conglomerations of multiple vehicles welded together.  The characters are crazy.  You've got the cultish, suicidal followers of Joe who think that if they die for him they will be let into Valhalla.  Nux is one of these followers who becomes a main player.  Hoult does a wonderful job in this role giving just a dash of needed comedy relief without it becoming too much.  We're also given a kick-ass leading lady in the form of Furiosa who is missing her left arm and has a mechanical one in it's place.  Ironically, the only character I had any sort of problem with was Max himself.  I thought the character and his choices and reactions were all written and performed well.  It was just his voice.  Max has very few spoken lines of dialogue and what he does have is spoken in almost a caveman grunt by Hardy.  This was not a deal-breaker though.  I'm a fan of Hardy and thought everything else he did with the character was great and can't wait to see more in the sequels (of which he has apparently signed on for three more).  And I'd be remiss to not mention the man strapped to the front of a vehicle made almost entirely of speakers, playing a guitar that shoots flames....just because.  That's the type of movie this is.


What you really come to see though, is the action itself.  Go re-watch one of the trailers.  All of that car chasing and explosions?  Stretch that out for two hours and you have this movie.  And yes, this is a good thing.  The majority of the stunts and effects were done practically instead of CGI, which just makes it that much better.  If you want suicidal maniacs, car chases, and lots of explosive action, just go watch this.  You will not be disappointed.  If you don't like that stuff, first off, what's wrong with you?  Second, this is not for you.  This is a popcorn flick if ever there was one.


This film is a great example of how a reboot can be a good thing if handled right.  Miller took his own mediocre franchise and re-imagined it into something that grabs a hold of you and doesn't let go until the credits.  If you're ready for a blockbuster with a lot of action to keep your pulse racing and not a lot of plot to bog you down, then check this one out.  This also has to be seen on the big screen.  This film relies heavily on visuals that will just not have the same effect on your screen at home.


Rating: ********-- (8 out of 10) [matinee]


Memorable Quote:
Nux: Oh, what a day.  What a lovely day.