Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) Warner Bros./Sci-Fi-Action-Adventure RT: 120 minutes Rated R (intense sequences of violence throughout, disturbing images) Director: George Miller Screenplay: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris Music: Junkie XL Cinematography: John Seale Release date: May 15, 2015 (US) Cast: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoe Kravitz, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton, Megan Gale, Josh Helman, Nathan Jones, John Howard.
Rating: ** ½
It would be great to say that Mad Max: Fury Road was totally worth the 30-year wait. It would also be great to say that Tom Hardy (Locke, The Drop) is a suitable replacement for original series star Mel Gibson (now known as “Mad Mel”). It would be great to say that the new installment makes the other movies eat its dust. Sadly, none of it is true.
As a fan of the Mad Max series, I was elated to hear that director George Miller would finally deliver on his promise of a fourth movie. I was relieved to hear that it got an R rating unlike the toned-down PG-13 Beyond Thunderdome. By all means, Fury Road should have been epic. It’s really not. It’s pretty good but there’s no getting around its many flaws, chief among them its less-than-threadbare plot. There’s really not much of a story here other Max and a bunch of women being chased by a tyrannical cult leader. I’ll get back to that in a moment, but first I must point out that Fury Road isn’t really about Max. The story focuses more on the character played by Charlize Theron (The Road). She’s the real star of the show. Max is more or less in the passenger seat for this loud, action-driven vehicle.
If you’ve never seen a Mad Max movie, you’re out of luck if you go into Fury Road cold. Miller offers nothing in the way of a backstory. He basically hits the ground running with Max being captured by an army of post-apocalyptic thugs and taken to Immortan Joe (Byrne, Toecutter from the first movie) who wants to use him as a blood donor for the sickly War Boy Nux (Hoult, the kid from About a Boy). Bound by a chain and an IV tube and wearing a metallic muzzle that makes him resemble Bane, the villain he played in The Dark Knight Rises, the two would appear to be inseparable. Once this is established, we get into the main story which involves Furiosa (Theron) making a run for freedom during a routine gasoline run. Once Joe realizes she’s deviated from her usual route, he and his army give chase. She carries with her a precious cargo that Joe wants back. What it is I won’t tell, but let’s just say that it turns a guy’s movie into a tale of female empowerment. Max manages to escape Nux and runs into Furiosa who reluctantly asks for his assistance in reaching her destination.
My favorite in the series is The Road Warrior. The 1981 sequel is brilliant on virtually every level, but that vehicle chase is a masterpiece. No matter how many times I watch it, I’m still impressed. Fury Road is essentially a two-hour vehicle chase and therein lies the problem. It’s overkill. Yes, it’s exciting and well-choreographed, but it gets to be too much after a while. It’s loud, chaotic, repetitive and far too reliant on CGI. By the 90-minute mark, I was numb. The charm of the first two movies is that they were low-budget jobs. The studio gave Miller $150 million to make Fury Road and it only goes to show that bigger isn’t necessarily better. The old ones had actual stunts and fiery crashes; they were more organic and visceral. Now all Miller has to do is create such scenes on computers. It feels like cheating.
I’m especially disappointed in Hardy; I really thought he could pull it off. He’s a very talented actor normally. He pales in comparison to Mel. What Miller should have done was find a young unknown with a macho quality and put him in the role. That’s how he discovered Gibson back in the 70s.
On the other hand, Theron drives Fury Road with a pretty sure hand. She’s actually quite good and deserves a spin-off movie. Then there’s the villain. Immortan Joe ranks slightly above Auntie Entity (Beyond Thunderdome) but far below Humungus (Road Warrior). I do love that they brought back Byrne to play another villain in the Mad Max universe. I will admit that Miller still knows how to put together cool action scenes. I also like some of the neat little touches like the guy strapped to the front of a truck playing an electric guitar for the entire movie. Fury Road isn’t a bad movie per se, just a disappointing one. Despite the return of an iconic character, it still feels like every other CGI-heavy summer action movie. It’s watchable, but I really expected more from Miller after so long a wait.
