Jay Reviews George Miller's "Mad Max: Fury Road"

"If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die historic on a fury road!" - Nux

Jay here.

It's been a little over twenty-four hours since I saw Mad Max: Fury Road and I still feel like someone scrambled up my brains, baked them in the hot desert sun, and put them back in my skull. It was such a visceral experience seeing it on the big screen, in beautiful Dolby Atmos sound no less, that I don't even know where to start this review.

First and foremost every discussion on this movie must begin and end with its creator, George Miller, who decided to forego the talking pigs and dancing penguins to come back to the genre and series that made his career and show all of these other action filmmakers how this shit is done. And, by the way, he's 70 years old too. Miller doesn't miss a beat, returning us to this familiar world and presenting us with a film that literally hardly ever stops to breathe for its two hour runtime.

Tom Hardy finds the core of the shattered psyche of Max Rockatansky.

Placed next to the previous entries in his Mad Max collection (1979's Mad Max, 1982's The Road Warrior, and 1985's Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome) this, the first entry in 30 years, feels so similar and yet also stands on its own as a more fleshed out and emotive work. It has most in common with The Road Warrior (check out my recent appreciation of that classic here), but it is also a Mad Max film like none we've ever seen. Miller is giving us a more deeper look at this world and this broken man than we've ever had before. 

The movie opens with Max (Tom Hardy taking over for original star, Mel Gibson) standing by his infamous car, the V8 Inertceptor, chewing on a two-headed lizard as he flashes back to the memories that haunt him and have driven him insane. Almost immediately he is run down and captured by the soldiers of the warlord, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne playing the big bad again after he also played the "Toecutter" 36 years ago in the original Mad Max). They take him to the Citadel where they plan to use him as a "bloodbag" hooking him up with an IV that transfuses his blood to one of Joe's "War Boys", Nux (Nicholas Hoult).

The tyrannical warlord, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) marshals an army of metal and wheels in order to hunt down Furiosa and Max and bring back his women.

Meanwhile, the main plot of film unfolds when one of Joe's most trusted lieutenants, the Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), makes off with one of his giant war rigs, secretly housing five women who were his most prized possessions. Her mission is one of redemption, to free these girls from their cruel bondage and lead them to the fabled "greenlands" where they may start life anew, free from the wastelands and a life of sexual slavery. Max manages to free himself from his chains and joins Furiosa and her female fugitives on their quest to escape the enraged Immortan Joe who rallies a small army, comprised of his own "War Boys" and the neighboring settlements' gangs as well.

Trust me when I tell you that Fury Road is at once both familiar and like nothing you've ever seen before. It's essentially one long car chase that expands over the entire course of the movie, with only a few scenes that actually involve characters stopping to talk to each other. Miller, always a filmmaker who has eschewed exposition and hates to explain things, has embraced the stylistic approach of such great directors like Sergio Leone and John Ford who also favored moving a story forward through action and faces that emote with a glance or a stare. It doesn't really matter that we know everything about these people and who they were before these events unfold. All we need to know about who they were and where they are going is explained through a tightly choreographed orgy of crashing metal, balls of flame and screams of pain and/or joy.

Now, if everything great about Mad Max: Fury Road stopped at how great the car chases and explosions are (and they are seriously "off the chain") then you would simply have what amounts to a fantastic summer movie, but Miller has a whole lot more to say with this tale of heroism in a blighted place. His movie also happens to be one of the most feminist action films ever made. In a way it is a firm indictment of the notion of a patriarchal society and the group of women who rebel against it. Led by Theron's Furiosa, who establishes herself as the real hero (or heroine, if you will) of this tale, she is easily the equal of Max. The South African Oscar winner gives her best performance since she won the gold statue for Monster, and she does it mostly with her eyes and determination to survive in world that treats women as property. This is truly her movie.

The Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) gains the upper hand on Max (Tom Hardy) while the women she's trying to save look on.

Yes, I couldn't help but think, as I watched Immortan Joe and the leaders of the other tribes helping him, "Wow, even in a post-apocalyptic wasteland old white men still end up running things." Not much has changed since the world died when it comes to the controlling power of religious fanaticism. Joe's "War Boy's" are brainwashed into believing that if they die in service to their master they will join him in Valhalla. One of these misguided boys, Nux, has his own journey to make through the film and it is a moving one. Hoult's portrayal of Nux goes from bombastic to nuanced as the young man slowly comes face to face with the untruths he has been fed his whole life. One cant help but think of his story as an allegory for what we see today in the Middle East with suicide bombers and the indoctrination they go through to die for their cause. It can't be coincidence.

Cinematographer, John Seale has managed to make this crazy roller-coaster ride one of the most beautifully shot action movies ever. With all of the violence and destruction taking place all over the place Seale makes every image gorgeous and dynamic. Colors pop off the screen and assault your eyes as they lie in stark contrast to endless desert landscape. Some of the action shots in Fury Road left me scratching my head wondering how they were accomplished. For example, in one early scene we are given a wide shot of Max being chased down in his car as he is sent flipping, over and over until the camera zooms in, without cutting, into the overturned car window to show us Max climbing out. Ok, so I know there is no way that Tom Hardy pulled off that stunt by flipping that car, so how the hell did they get that shot with him getting out of the car? There had to have been a cut there somewhere that was somehow edited out, similar to the technique used in Birdman last year, I guess. Otherwise, I don't know how they did it.

Insane stunts + amazing shots = awesomeness

This movie is a master-class in how to shoot action with practical effects and stunts, heightened by selective usage of CGI to add to the overall visuals. Like its predecessors, Fury Road has some stunts that make your jaw drop. One scene involving bad guys swinging down on our heroes on poles was ridiculously choreographed and had me turning to my girlfriend saying, "It's like Satan's, Cirque de Soleil". And I will not finish this review without mentioning the audacity of having our villain's need to bring a heavy metal guitarist along for his trek, who spends the entire movie wailing on his ridiculous instrument that shoots fire from its neck. If you weren't convinced before, that alone should sell it for you.

Yes, this happened . . . .

Mad Max: Fury Road is the new standard for action movies. In a world of superhero extravaganzas it stands high above all of the summer blockbuster fare of recent years. In fact I would call it the best since 2008's The Dark Knight, for sure. It's a masterpiece of post-apocalyptic destruction made even more accomplished by its daring photography, a smart script with more than car crashes on its mind and the direction of a filmmaker whose unique career has brought him to a true high point that everyone needs to experience in the biggest, loudest theater they can find.