MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
C+
Australia USA (120 mi)
2015 ‘Scope d:
George Miller Official
site
If you like adrenaline-laced Hollywood action adventures,
then this is the movie for you, as it’s really all about a series of lengthy
chase scenes, each one attempting to create blood-curdling moments of action
and suspense, followed by a few moments of down time where the viewers can
catch their breath, before the next one starts up again. It’s a bit like kids waiting in line at
Disneyland before taking a ride on one of the more spectacular roller coaster
adventures of their young lives, where spending all day at this could resemble
the feel of this movie. It’s not
essential that you’re young, but it actually plays better to those who weren’t
around to see the original MAD MAX Trilogy (1979, 81, 85). To those that were, this is fairly
forgettable, as you’ve seen it all before, where this is kind of a combination
of films two and three reassembled into a director’s cut, where director George
Miller waited thirty years for technology to catch up to what he likes to do,
which is stage elaborately choreographed fast-action fantasy sequences that are
pumped and accelerated by the apocalyptic, end-of-the-world setting, making it
matter who wins these catastrophic bloodfests filled with crashes and
explosions and bodies hurled in every which direction, giving each episode a
moralistic twist. Personally, having
seen the originals as they came out, there’s not much to get excited about, as
this has all played out before, where in at least one person’s opinion, Mel
Gibson’s Max (replaced here by British actor Tom Hardy) remains the essential piece of the puzzle, where
the spare minimalism of the initial episode (made for less than half a million
yet earning $100 million, holding the Guinness
Book of World Records for most profitable film for decades, supplanted by
1999’s BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, and then 2007’s PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, which remains
the most profitable low-budget movie ever) remains the best for its novelty,
daring originality and utter bleakness.
No one had ever seen anything like that before. While this may be exactly what people in
theaters want to see today, where it’s all about thrilling action and
explosions on the biggest screen, really it’s just more of the same. Even the previews before the movie tell the
story, as there were four (count ‘em) trailers for Marvel Comic Book action
adventure movies, from ANT-MAN to FANTASTIC FOUR to DEADPOOL to BATMAN V
SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, not to mention a new STAR WARS Christmas release, where
there is a stream of neverending movies just like this coming out of Hollywood
for the next gazillion years (DC
and Marvel Comic Book Movie Lineup - 2015 to 2020 ...). The movie industry has apparently invested
all their money in exploding action adventures like this, where viewers must
pay a premium price to watch it in IMAX or 3D or the biggest and loudest
theater experience possible, where what you pay for is more vividly enthralling
than the normal experience of watching it in the comforts of your home, as
that’s what Hollywood is selling. That’s
the new theatrical experience, where bigger is better.
Essentially modelled after MAD MAX 2, aka: THE ROAD WARRIOR
(1981), which offered breathtakingly relentless non-stop action in an era
before CGI effects were possible and is considered one of the greatest action movies
ever made, topping the list in a recent January 14, 2015 Rolling Stone magazine Reader’s Poll, Readers'
Poll: The 10 Best Action Movies of All Time ..., while described by critic Richard
Scheib, Moria
- The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review [Richard Scheib], as
an “exhilarating non-stop rollercoaster ride of a film that contains some of
the most exciting stunts and car crashes ever put on screen.” It is the ultimate demolition derby movie
that this fourth film has attempted to surpass―and if you’re judging purely by
thrills and spills, perhaps it has. The
question, of course, is what does it matter?
Is this anything more than a summer blockbuster movie? Does it contain a hint of the poetry from the
original Trilogy? Compare the narrator
from MAD MAX 2:
A
whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear.
Men began to feed on men. On the
roads it was a white line nightmare.
Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would
survive. The gangs took over the
highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men
were battered and smashed. Men like
Max. The warrior Max. In the roar of an engine, he lost
everything. And became a shell of a man,
a burnt out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who
wandered out into the wasteland.
While a similar narration opens MAD MAX 4, toned down
significantly:
My
name is Max. My world is fire and blood.
Outside of the first, which has become a prelude for the
rest, still connected to the world as it was before whatever apocalyptical
disaster occurred, MAD MAX 4 is perhaps the most minimalist of the entire
series, where Max himself is not even the center of the action, but has been
replaced by a newly introduced character, Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who’s seen
as more of a badass than Max, whose replacement by a different actor is simply
unthinkable. It would be like Sergio
Leone finding someone to replace Clint Eastwood in his legendary spaghetti
westerns. Some iconic figures are so
cemented in the heart of the culture that it’s something you just don’t mess
with. Perhaps as a consequence of the
transitory nature of a global economy, nothing is sacred. But this certainly alters the tone of the
movie, where the audience was asked to get inside the head of this lone figure
wandering the wasteland, a man who started out with a wife and child, but lost
everything, as did everybody else. What
follows is utter savagery, but Max, though loath to admit it, becomes a symbol
for what was lost, still holding to a humane streak hidden deep inside that gruff
exterior which affects our sympathies and appreciation for him, as he’s driven
like no one else. That’s entirely
missing in this 4th episode. And while
he’s present, he appears mentally unstable, having grown closer to the darker
side of madness, haunted by recurring flashbacks and psychotic voices in his
head of all the people he tried to save and failed in the past, which have the
effect of draining his strength and weakening his will to survive, which is and
always has been his strongest asset. Not
so here, as we haven’t a clue what drives this man, as we no longer connect him
to that same iconic figure. Does that
alter one’s appreciation for the movie?
Perhaps, as Max was like no one else.
Altering his persona removes our interest in the overall scheme of
things, unless all we care about are extended chase sequences. Originally conceived more than a decade ago,
the film was ready to shoot, but postponed following the 9/11 attacks, where
any number of obstacles since then have prevented the film from being made
until now. While all have been conceived
and directed by Australian George Miller, this long interim from the last film
has allowed technology to catch up with his grandiose vision, as the key to all
these films has been the fantastic visual design of an entirely original
universe, like something that might have come out of the mind and imagination
of fantasy surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky.
At least partially shot in the Namib
Desert of Namibia,
South Africa, considered the world’s oldest desert, it is a fitting landscape
for the remnants of a post-apocalyptic world, as the world’s devastation is
easily understandable without ever having to resort to any extraneous talk
about how we destroyed ourselves.
Exactly like MAD MAX 2, the action centers around a daring
ride in a tanker truck to help save what’s left of any civilized world, but in
something of a twist, Max is not the one driving the truck. Instead he’s imprisoned by a marauding gang
of thugs that control a territory built into the cavernous regions of a giant
rock formation known as the Citadel, where they have tapped into an underground
water supply and built a structured male-dominated society based on servitude,
controlled by the tyrannical Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), a hulking mass of
a man that resembles the primitive crudeness of early gladiators. While it’s essential that each of the imaginary
worlds created for each film have a distinctly different look, this one is
equally outrageous, with oversized women with massive breasts who are hooked up
to machines for their milk, but also an army of captive blood donors whose
blood is used to keep others alive, many of whom are suffering from cancerous
tumors. After his capture, Max is kept
in chains as a “blood bag,” hooked up like an IV to one of the young “War Boys”
named Nux (Nicholas Hoult), who dreams of pleasing Joe with his valor in the
field of battle, where Joe promises an afterlife in Valhalla if they die in
combat. Nux uses Max as a hood ornament
for one of their gas runs into a nearby city in the wasteland, while Joe’s top
driver, Furiosa, is driving the giant tanker, surrounded by a squadron of
motorbikes and war hot rods armed to the teeth, one of which is driven by Nux,
a deranged, new generation kid who is defined by his unhinged fanaticism. When Furiosa takes an unexpected turn,
spotted by Joe’s lookout team, all Hell breaks loose, as this act of defiance
opens the floodgates of rebellion, where hidden in the truck Furiosa is
smuggling out Joe’s five wives, each one selected for breeding, hoping to lead
them to freedom. What follows is a
furious assault to repossess his property, while Max remains chained to the car
wearing an armored mask throughout the heated battle, with the tanker plunging
headfirst into the middle of a raging sandstorm. In the lull after the storm, Max and Furiosa
have their own little standoff, where he discovers the young girls, uses
cutters to remove the chains, and tries to drive away on his own, but the gas
tank is rigged, forcing them, for better or for worse, to forge an uneasy
alliance. This rag tag team of
survivors, including Nux who changes sides once he’s introduced to female
companionship, and others they meet along the way, continue to come under waves
of relentless assaults for the remainder of the picture, a frenetically
choreographed run for freedom that accentuates Miller’s prowess at directing
exhilarating, ultra-kinetic action scenes of fire, bloody chaos and sheer
mayhem while barreling through the wide-open expanse of the desert, where THE
FAST AND THE FURIOUS (2001, 03, 06, 09, 11, 13, 15) meets a modern day LAWRENCE
OF ARABIA (1962) in a nonstop action adventure movie. As to claims of a feminist theme, let’s not to
get carried away, as it’s only in the sense that women, just like men, can
become fantasy figures who lead revolts and fire guns and rifles defending
themselves, while killing others with equal success. Hardly worthy of applause, but many in the
theater were cheering, much as they did generations earlier for John Wayne in
westerns.
