Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Mad Max: Fury Road (R)

"What a Lovely Day!"

In the bombed out dusty future of our world, the remnants of society are banded together in savage attempts to survive the wasteland.  Those, like Max, who cling to the past and refuse to submit to the new world are seen as mere untapped resources, lone wolves.  And those that revolt against this insane patriarchy are pursued with chrome and bloody exhaust in Post-Apocalyptic godfather George Miller's 30 years in the making follow up to the Mad Max series, Fury Road.

With a character design dregged from the weird fantasies of Brom, vehicle designs that Ratfink would salivate over, a brutal world finally fully realized and minutia-ized, and stunts and action that are in-camera and astonishing to behold, Mad Max returns full throttle and on the red line.  This is the kind of film either you know the genre and enjoy immersion or the over-the-top-ness will turn you off  and you'll avoid.  There are quite a few surprising twists thrown into the mix however, completely shattering the mold that Miller himself invented.  CGI is prominent and a bit unwelcome (mostly it looks like for 3D showings and sometimes cheaply).  Females now have a more prominent role, lead by Imperator Furiosa (the incomparable Charlize Theron who is well cast as the co-lead of the film).  This may in fact turn off some of the muscle car and gear head beer swillers who traditionally enjoy Max films, as Furiosa commands much of the bad-assery on screen, what with the Evil-Dead arm and newly styled savage fem-action hero who somehow retains her femaleness (a woman Max she's not).  Grrl Power is the name of the game in Fury Road, and many fans will astound at the backseat driving Max does for most of the film.  Now played by Tom Hardy (Mel Gibson is retired in all but name due to his shenanigans), Max almost barely deserves to be in the title.  And, unfortunately, Hardy is either not up to filling Gibson's Mad shoes or Miller unwilling to completely allow him to.  The character is missing the insane drive and masculinity that Gibson brought the role, and combined with sharing the screen with Theron and having his character's madness upped to actual insanity really hampers one of the great action roles of all time.  Perhaps a return of the character to full glory first without all the femme-fatals (sic) would have lessened the sting, but Max almost seems like just another of the interesting side-characters that colorize Miller's Apoc films.

And what colorful characters there are!  The ultra-males, the seed saving grandmothers, the War Boys and concubines and Bullet Farmers, all tumor laced and disgusting.  One is a stand out, young Nicholas Hoult (Hank McCoy in X-Men First Class) is a stand out as Nux the sickly War Boy.  He has a manic energy and fanaticism that drives the first half and mellows the second, and is a stand out performance.  All of the Max films have benefited from villains that you enjoy spending time with and seeing defeated, but Fury Road has so many of these characters whose insane lifestyle you just can't help but admire, who ride into battle like Valkyries with a Rock'N'Roll opera being performed live as they drive (like Wagner gene-spliced with GWAR) with flame throwers spitting and exhaust pipes flaming, that unlike much of the genre of post-apocalypse, Fury Road is a dangerous outback that seems fun to visit (even if no one would want to live there).  The first break in the action left the audience winded, and then continued for another hour and a half.  Fantastic stuff.

9 Don't Look Thumbs Up out of 10 (GREAT)

Bone-us Haiku

Shotgun eyes at dusk
Lizard skulls and blood bag dust
Chrome fenders eat well.

(Humongus Approved)