Mad Max: Fury Road Movie Review [w/video]

Mad Max: Fury Road Movie Review [w/video]The Revitalization This Franchise DeservesChris Bruce

Mad Max: Fury Road looks like Burning Man as filtered through punk rock, grease and gasoline and projected on the cinema screen. It's been about 30 years since a new entry in the franchise graced theaters, and things didn't go out with a bang in 1985's disappointing Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
Series creator George Miller has finally given the world another installment to truly enjoy with this hugely entertaining, stunt spectacular.

Don't worry about seeing any of the previous movies before arriving at the theater. You don't need to know the back catalog to enjoy this one. As Fury Road opens, we find Max, now played by Tom Hardy, as an unkempt man who is running from his demons, and visions of his past continue to haunt him. The Wasteland has gotten rougher, too. Rather than fighting over gasoline in this film, the persistent radiation has forced the world to struggle simply to survive.

There's not much a plot to dissect from Fury Road, either. The big villain is Immortan Joe who controls the area's water. With a breathing apparatus on his back and armor to hide his hideously deformed body, he looks like a monstrous, vaguely steampunk Darth Vader. Joe is chasing Charlize Theron's wonderfully named Imperator Furiosa for something he wants. From there, the film gets the engines started early, puts the pedal down and only briefly lets up for enough time to let the audience catch their breath.

Max might be the titular character, but there are probably text messages longer than all of his dialogue. The lack of exposition isn't a downside, though. Where many movies might try to cram in a story, Miller replaces it with huge explosions and roaring engines.

Easily half of the running time is dedicated to two, monumental chases through the desert with dozens of vehicles and bikes taking part in each of them. While the Wasteland of Fury Road might be aesthetically repulsive, this ranks among the most gorgeous looking action films in recent memory. Everything in this world is supposed to be cobbled together, and it all looks so real on the screen. Take the cars for example: you can spot a Mercedes-Benz grille here or Cadillac fins there, but nothing is kept stock. Instead, these machines are made to survive in this dystopia with massive tires and huge blowers sticking through the hoods.

One of the high points of the original Mad Max was the fantastic stunt work, which has carried over to this latest film. Compared to other modern action movies, it's immensely impressive to see physical objects interacting in so many of the stunts. There are definitely moments of CG too like the sandstorm set piece from the trailer as the most egregious example, but everything else looks great.

If the film has one weak point, it's a story point during a later lull in the action that doesn't feel entirely earned or really make much sense. However, this decision sets up the fantastic, climatic chase that brings the picture to a close, so the fault is easy to ignore. Just don't think too hard. In fact, that's probably a good message for approaching the entire movie.

Fury Road comes off more as an experience as opposed to a traditional film. The focus here is placed on presenting high-octane action through amazing cinematography for as long as possible. Some of the characters exist simply to look cool on the big screen, but Miller isn't trying to tell a nuanced tale of surviving post-society. Rather, this is a belated chance for Mad Max to return to the highs of the first two installments in the series.

If you end up checking out Mad Max: Fury Road this weekend, let us know in Comments what you think. Warner Bros. has put out several great trailers for the movie, but the one below does the best job of nailing the feel without giving too much away.

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'Mad Max: Fury Road' movie review: So many cars, so little plot

We see it so you won’t have to (but you'll probably still want want to)

The fourth installment of the Mad Max franchise, "Fury Road," could have been so good.

Crikey.

The design of the whole thing, from the cars to the characters to the magnificent sprawling sets scattered across the desolate Namib desert, make for such a starkly stunning setting that it really is too bad they couldn’t have made the characters say something more interesting. Instead, the movie relies on delivering an overpowering visual clobbering and forgets to try and add anything else.

There are a few well-timed pauses in the action that really add to the story but they’re almost accidental in nature and the best and funniest one is immediately stepped on by yet another ill-timed body-squashing.

But this ain’t Filmweek, it’s Autoweek, and there are some great cars here. Our favorite is the Gigahorse, two 1959 Cadillacs welded on top of each other and bolted to a Monster Truck. This is the ride of choice of His Imperial Excellence the Warlord Immortan Joe. Joe is a very, very bad man who has enslaved his people and even cruelly keeps a harem of wives he calls “prized breeders.” When our heroine Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa rescues the girls and makes a break for freedom, an enraged Immortan Joe gives chase, employing a battalion of War Boys who have all been promised immortality in Valhalla. That’s the premise and that is what launches a two-hour post-apocalyptic car chase.

Car Life Gallery: Mad Max Fury Road cars and trucks and...things

Oh yeah, the cars.

Joe’s army has a Dodge Power Wagon-looking monster truck called The Big Foot, which has a pretty good jump scene in the movie, as well as a low-range transfer case rock-crawling scene to rival anything on The Rubicon.

Our hero Mad Max’s Interceptor, an Australian-market XB Falcon Coupe, is the first car we see, rusted and properly post-apocalyptic itself. The Peacemaker is a Plymouth Valiant on tank treads commanded by a bullet-toothed madman made up to look, in a Mad Maxian way, like an English Lord. The Tanker is a gas-hauling big rig with an old Mercedes S-Class for a cab. And Furiosa herself drives an unstoppable 18-or-more-wheeler called The War Rig. There are motorcycles, too. And exploding harpoons. And buzz saws, cross bows, spears, spikes and spatulas. There is nothing missing in this wheeled arsenal of an action movie.

Except some good dialogue. The words spoken at the start, a voiceover by Max explaining how he got where he is and what happened to the thing formerly known as civilization, are pretty good, and make us hopeful the whole movie will have such an articulate story. But there is almost nothing more said. Just a massive, War Boy-blowing road race. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just could have been so much better. At least it doesn’t fall all over itself trying to give meaning like a "Fast and Furious" flick (“They ain’t nothing but what ya got when ya got nothing blah blah blah”).

It would have also been nice, from our perspective at least, to have some lingering closeups or even some longer shots of the cars themselves. They looked really cool in the pre-release stills we saw a couple weeks ago. Instead you have to peel your eyeballs for fleeting glimpses of them as they whir and blast past before getting blasted to smithereens. Pity.

Should you go see it? Yeah, go see it. It is a sweeping vista on the end (and rebirth?) of civilization. But we wish there had been more.

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