Mad Max: Fury Road – Movie Review
Mad Max: Fury Road – R
Release Date: Fri 15 May 2015
Mad Max: Fury Road revives the character previously played by Mel Gibson in three 1980’s action movies. Tom Hardy plays the title role as Max, who in this installment forms an uneasy alliance with Furiosa (Charlize Theron) for the mutual benefit and the survival of those in Furiosa’s care.
This movie stands as a testament to practical, old school methods of shooting action. My eyes were telling me that everything I saw on the screen somehow was happening. How unbelievable that is separates classic action from modern, CG-heavy action movies. The camera remains steady, never jerking around to tell us that there’s excitement. There’s very little dialogue. The language of film is used expertly to present a world that is both familiar and foreign at the same time.
It’s strange to say that this is a movie that makes sense seeing as it involves very strange people doing strange, largely unexplained things. It is the presentation that makes sense. We always know what the character’s goals are. The action is filmed from enough distance and without unnecessary movements so that we always understand what we’re looking at. The plot isn’t terribly complex or thought-provoking but it serves the action well and there’s enough mystery to keep you guessing. The movie also seems to set up standard tropes only to subvert them. All of this keeps the audience glued to the screen.
Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron are great in their respective roles. All the smaller roles have great personality and grounding. Again, under different circumstances Max and his pals would be killing an army of nameless bad guys. Here, everyone has a bit of a personality. There’s the strange warlords that have their own tensions and alliances coming after Furiosa. There’s the two grunts in the warlord’s army that we follow through the entire story.
The only thing that will make this movie more enjoyable is the inevitable documentaries on making the movie. I want to know how they pulled off some of these amazing stunts. I highly recommend seeing this movie in the theater.
Amber, Matthew, Aaron and I saw it in the theater and had a discussion in the car:
