Movie Review Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road

I must have been 13 or 14 when I first saw Mad Max. I remember lying on the living room floor, face inches from the television, watching Max Rockatansky’s family and friends being attacked and killed by a motorcycle gang that was nearly a force of nature in their cruelty and violence. Society, in Mad Max, is falling over a cliff into a dark abyss, fingernails digging into the dirt and the gang, led by Toecutter, is gleefully kicking it in the face trying to hurry the fall. 

By the time Max loses everything he has to live for and goes on a kill-crazy rampage, an angel of vengeance in the last of the great V-8 Interceptors, I was hooked.  This was no ordinary car chase movie, no ordinary revenge fantasy movie. There is very little exposition in Mad Max, very little to explain what has happened to the world, to explain why there are gangs of psychopaths roaming the countryside, why the cities are empty, why the police force is the last defense against complete anarchy. What little world building there is in Mad Max is heard in snippets of radio broadcasts like hints of secrets teased out by the film. Filmed on a micro-budget, fantastically badly dubbed by the American distributer Mad Max could’ve just been a novelty, a midnight movie with some car chases. Instead Mad Max has become legend. For twenty years it held the record for the greatest profit-to-cost ratio of any film made. 

Mad Max was followed by The Road Warrior in 1981, a damn near perfect film, and by Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985, a film flawed by the excesses of the 80s and a convoluted plot that nearly twenty years later is still hard to explain. 

With those three films, Max had become part of the film vocabulary, the anti-hero writ large. The image of Mel Gibson walking down a highway, sawed-off shotgun in hand, wearing his police leathers and a leg-brace, cattle dog at his side, is one of the great iconic images from film’s first century. 

Which finally brings us to Mad Max: Fury Road. 

I was apprehensive about Fury Road. It’s been thirty years since Thunderdome. The world has changed a lot since 1985. Does a character like Max Rockatansky have a place in today’s world? Could George Miller reclaim the magic touch that had created The Road Warrior? Could Tom Hardy slip on the leathers and the leg-brace and drive the last of the great V-8 Interceptors? Does anyone born in the last thirty or so years give a damn about Max and his madness?

I never should’ve doubted. 

Fury Road is everything anyone would want in a Mad Max film. From the opening narration, from the opening shot of Max standing beside the last of the great V-8 Interceptors, looking out over a desert landscape that would make John Ford envious, the ghosts of Max’s past failures haunting him, Fury Road grabs you by the collar and never lets go.

Furious Seven set the action film bar very high earlier this year. Fury Road takes that bar, sets it on fire and leaves it smoldering in a car wreck, chrome and steel horribly twisted and mangled. With over-the-top action set pieces that feel so very real, with cartoonish villains that are so very scary Fury Road takes the Marvel Cinematic Universe out behind the bar and leaves it bloody and scarred. Come awards season, Fury Road could be the film that breaks out of the genre film basement. Fury Road is blockbuster film-making done right.

The movie is breathtakingly beautiful, with deserts that stretch on forever, claustrophobic canyons, and blue skies so large that Montana is jealous. Skyfall set a new standard for action film cinematography and Fury Road easily meets that. 

The vehicles in Fury Road are, without exception, awesome. From the last of the great V-8 Interceptors, to the War Boys’ chase cars, to the War Rig Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa drives, to the whatever the hell it is that leads King Immortan Joe’s chase with its drums and flame-throwing double-necked guitar, the motorized machines of Fury Road are more than utilitarian, they have personality as well. They are characters.

Tom Hardy is great as Max. With very little dialogue to play with, and most of it insane mumblings, Hardy gets everything right about the character. He has lost everything and only survives out of habit. When given a chance to do something more, he rejects it until the ghosts of his past won’t let him. Charlize Theron is, of course, awesome. Strong, a woman of action and conviction, her Furiosa isn’t the exception to rule here – every woman in this film is a survivor and a leader. There is no damsel in distress in this film. Even back in 1981, with The Road Warrior, George Miller has had strong women in the Mad Max story. But these women are something else entirely. These are women as fully realized characters without losing their sexuality. 

Every performance in Fury Road is exceptional. They add so much, you believe in these characters, in their emotional truths. The biggest surprise might be the return of Hugh Keays-Byrne to the series, as Joe. He played Toecutter in the original Mad Max. George Miller has done this before, have an actor return to play a different character, like Bruce Spence who played the Gyro Captain in The Road Warrior and Jebidiah the Pilot in Thunderdome. 

So, to sum this up for Kellie who only reads the last paragraph or so of these things, Fury Road is exceptional film-making, Tom Hardy is great as Max and is worthy to wear the leathers. I honestly don’t think someone would need to watch the rest of the series to enjoy this one. There is the occasional Easter egg for the folks that have, but really, the story is strong enough for the film to stand on its own.

The 13 year old that gets to see this while lying on the living room floor, face inches from the television, will have his life changed. I envy that kid.