Keyser Soze
AW YEEEAH!
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2002
- Messages
- 21,405
- Reaction score
- 14
- Points
- 33
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is a film that has a lot of hype behind it. General excitement was buzzing right from the point this film - which had been in various stages of pre-production from as early as 1999! - was finally actually getting made, then the buzz grew with the awesome teaser trailer, and it reached fever pitch when that incredible full trailer hit a month or so back. And the reviews coming in have been near uniformly euphoric, paired with incredibly strong word-of-mouth... it all makes you think the levels of anticipation behind this were almost too high for the film to possibly live up to. I've grown wary of the dangers of expectation when long-dormant franchises are revived for sequels, even when the original directors return like with Steven Spielberg for INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL or Ridley Scott for PROMOTHEUS. You watch the trailers, and you get your hopes up that they have somehow managed to recapture the spirit of the earlier classics... only for the end product to disappoint. This is not the case with FURY ROAD, which finally arrives over 30 years since the last entry in the MAD MAX series, BEYOND THUNDERDOME. Not only has George Miller managed to live up to the magic of his original trilogy with this latest entry, but he's actually surpassed them to push the saga to whole new heights.
Much like previous series high-watermark, THE ROAD WARRIOR, the plot of FURY ROAD is utterly minimal, stripped right down to the bare components to make this a ruthlessly efficient narrative engine. Our eponymous hero Max, now played by Tom Hardy, is captured and taken captive by the forces of Immortan Joe, a warlord who rules an oppressed society with an iron fist by hoarding the local water supply. When Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa absconds from Joe's Citadel in a massive war rig with his five young slave-brides in tow, a furious Immortan Joe summons an army to give pursuit through the desert wastelands, with Max dragged along for the ride. And with that brief set-up taken care of relatively quickly, the rest of the movie is one massive extended chase sequence. Even in the quieter moments of downtime, focusing on character development, the film lets us know that Joe and his War-Boys are still giving chase, even if our heroes have got enough distance ahead of them to allow for a momentary breather. It's a basic plot, but it's the execution that makes it astounding, because... oh boy, what a chase!
I recall being very pleased by THE WOLF OF WALL STREET last year, because it showed that - even with a whole new generation of filmmakers who have pretty much crafted a career out of being inspired by him - Martin Scorsese, even at his advanced age, can still turn on top gear and do the style of cinema he innovated better than anyone, leaving his pretenders in the dust. And here, 70-year-old George Miller shows that the same very much applies to him. The best part of 20 years spent making cuddly family films with talking animals hasn't numbed the Australian auteur's ability to craft explosive action mayhem as well as anyone.
I think many moviegoers of my generation and older have had the feeling when watching action films of today, particularly ones built around car chases, that they just don't have that same visceral quality we remember from our formative films, like something is now lacking. But in FURY ROAD, Miller has managed to recreate that magical feeling. And I think a big part of that is that CGI and green-screen has largely been eschewed in favor of location shooting and actual stunt work. Of course, there is some CGI touching up and additional effects added, but these are real vehicles going boom, and as a viewer, you can feel the difference, it gives proceedings more weight and makes you feel more immersed. When the "pole-cat" War-Boys vault from vehicle to vehicle on giant bouncy poles, it's all the more breathtaking because you know it was actually done on moving vehicles by Cirque do Soleil performers. Credit is also due here to cinematographer John Seale and editors Margaret Sixel and Jason Ballantine, who along with Miller avoid the trapping of lesser car chases of constant quick cuts that make the carnage ultimately empty and numbing, instead giving us a wide canvas to let the mayhem unfold, imbuing each vehicle with presence and personality that lets us clearly follow its course through each sequence, and having everything be driven in raw, visual narrative: the action here isn't a break from the story, it IS the story. FURY ROAD does for car chases what THE RAID did for hand-to-hand combat.
But it's not just in the action where Miller excels. Something that really helps to set this apart from your average blockbuster is how idiosyncratic and the product of a singular artistic vision it is. The MAD MAX series has always been a bit of an oddball, eccentric mythology, and that continues here on a massive scale. You really get the sense that George Miller has crafted a vast world with a history and culture we'll only know a fragment of, and we've just been thrown into the middle of it, with all these wonderful details that you imagine Miller knows extensive information about and which was thoroughly developed, but which we only see for a fleeting moment in the background, adding color. One example: the heroes drive the war rig through rotten marshland, and in the foreground we see old men walking on all fours on massive stilts through the quicksand-like mire: never explained, but it's a wonderful flourish.
I think some MAD MAX films were more successful than others, but what none of them were ever lacking in was inventiveness and imagination. But it's the kind of deeply strange high concept world-building that I can't quite believe was given such a massive budget to be a tentpole blockbuster by a major Hollywood studio. This is a film where one of the many vehicles in the villain's fleet is a massive stage, with a masked lunatic called The Doof Warrior hanging from a bungee cord, playing an electric guitar that also blasts flames with each power chord, which acts as the soundtrack of the film. Basically: FURY ROAD is, in the best possible way, utterly demented.
The dialogue here is very sparse, characters played in broad shades, and some might think that would mean there's no room for great performances, but I'd disagree. Tom Hardy is on great form. I've seen some say he pales in comparison to Mel Gibson, and of course Mel is the iconic Max, but Hardy brings his own energy to the role to give it a unique spin. His Mad Max leans more heavily on the "mad" part of the equation, less the weathered cynic Gibson portrayed than someone who seems to have been reduced by the world around him to being near animal-like, all grunts and wild, darting eyes... an effect enhanced by the fact he wears a metal muzzle across his face for the first segment of the film. The flashbacks to his tortured past here are sped-up flashes that feel like crazed fever dreams, creating a sense of trippy hysteria that puts us in his unhinged mindset.
But it's Charlize Theron who steals the show as Furiosa. Stoic and badass, but betraying moments of pain and heartbreak with just her face, we learn relatively little of her backstory or motives, and yet we get a pretty firm idea of the life Furiosa has led based on Theron's performance. Just as she inspires those around her in the film to follow her, Furiosa also inspires us to emotionally invest in her and her mission, and really do as an audience. And yet it never feels like a self-conscious "ass-kicking woman!" role, she's just a strong character regardless of gender, someone presented in a lot of ways as a mirror of Max, but maybe just a little less broken. Max sees that, unlike him, she is still capable of hope, and he helps her out of a desire to see that hope kept alive as much as anything else. With this role, Theron can proudly stand Furiosa alongside the likes of Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor and Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley in the canon of great action movie heroines.
I may have singled out Hardy and Theron, but really, every part - large and small - is pitch-perfect. Nicholas Hoult does career best work as fanatical war-boy Nux, playing someone deranged and dangerous, and yet deeply damaged by circumstance so you can't help but feel some compassion for him. Hugh Keays-Bryne - villain Toecutter in the original MAD MAX - returns here to play another remarkably odious monster of a villain in Immortan Joe. And yet, as utterly vile and without redeeming qualities as he is, and as reprehensible as his treatment of his "brides" may be, there are even moments where you almost see the rotten, twisted shred of what's left of his humanity underneath the armor and horrifying mask. Even the various smaller parts - from imbecilic man-child henchman Rictus Erectus to the women of the Vuvalini tribe - have little moments where they shine. Again, it's a beautifully-realised world down to every detail, including the characters.
Really, just about every aspect of this film I could write a paragraph praising. The one other thing I want to give special mention to is the soundtrack, performed by Junkie XL (with the occasional enhancement from The Doof Warrior!), which acts as a thundering, pulse-pounding heartbeat for the movie... rousing stuff. The film really manages to be a delight for the ears as well as the eyes.
In closing, here is what I believe is the biggest compliment I can bestow upon MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. When I was a young kid, and I experienced the MAD MAX movies for the first time, I remember thinking of the climactic chases of THE ROAD WARRIOR and BEYOND THUNDERDOME (I didn't catch the first film until I was a little older) as being impossibly huge, the biggest action spectacle my young eyes had ever witnessed. Even as I generally forgot the movies as a whole, those sequences stuck with me, and inflated the MAD MAX series in my mind as a dizzying benchmark for cinematic action sequences, sheer death-defying, breath-caught-in-your-throat event cinema. And I've rewatched those films recently, and I still admire those sequences, and I still think THE ROAD WARRIOR is a great film, but it isn't as impossibly huge as you remember it being as a kid: with the experience of an adult, you can look at those sequences and see the age, and the points where the budget was pushed to the limit. Though of course you still admire the great technical achievement. So, here's the compliment... MAD MAX: FURY ROAD feels like that impossible spectacle of a film that I remembered the earlier MAD MAX films being from my early experience of seeing them in my formative years.
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is an action masterpiece. Go see it, and, trust me on this, go see it in the cinema. Don't wait for DVD, PLEASE don't torrent it onto your computer. This is a film that should be seen on as big a screen as you can find. If at all possible, see it in 3D IMAX, it's worth it. An exhilarating experience, one that had me on the edge of my seat and gasping with awe throughout. This, for me, is pure cinema.
10/10
Much like previous series high-watermark, THE ROAD WARRIOR, the plot of FURY ROAD is utterly minimal, stripped right down to the bare components to make this a ruthlessly efficient narrative engine. Our eponymous hero Max, now played by Tom Hardy, is captured and taken captive by the forces of Immortan Joe, a warlord who rules an oppressed society with an iron fist by hoarding the local water supply. When Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa absconds from Joe's Citadel in a massive war rig with his five young slave-brides in tow, a furious Immortan Joe summons an army to give pursuit through the desert wastelands, with Max dragged along for the ride. And with that brief set-up taken care of relatively quickly, the rest of the movie is one massive extended chase sequence. Even in the quieter moments of downtime, focusing on character development, the film lets us know that Joe and his War-Boys are still giving chase, even if our heroes have got enough distance ahead of them to allow for a momentary breather. It's a basic plot, but it's the execution that makes it astounding, because... oh boy, what a chase!
I recall being very pleased by THE WOLF OF WALL STREET last year, because it showed that - even with a whole new generation of filmmakers who have pretty much crafted a career out of being inspired by him - Martin Scorsese, even at his advanced age, can still turn on top gear and do the style of cinema he innovated better than anyone, leaving his pretenders in the dust. And here, 70-year-old George Miller shows that the same very much applies to him. The best part of 20 years spent making cuddly family films with talking animals hasn't numbed the Australian auteur's ability to craft explosive action mayhem as well as anyone.
I think many moviegoers of my generation and older have had the feeling when watching action films of today, particularly ones built around car chases, that they just don't have that same visceral quality we remember from our formative films, like something is now lacking. But in FURY ROAD, Miller has managed to recreate that magical feeling. And I think a big part of that is that CGI and green-screen has largely been eschewed in favor of location shooting and actual stunt work. Of course, there is some CGI touching up and additional effects added, but these are real vehicles going boom, and as a viewer, you can feel the difference, it gives proceedings more weight and makes you feel more immersed. When the "pole-cat" War-Boys vault from vehicle to vehicle on giant bouncy poles, it's all the more breathtaking because you know it was actually done on moving vehicles by Cirque do Soleil performers. Credit is also due here to cinematographer John Seale and editors Margaret Sixel and Jason Ballantine, who along with Miller avoid the trapping of lesser car chases of constant quick cuts that make the carnage ultimately empty and numbing, instead giving us a wide canvas to let the mayhem unfold, imbuing each vehicle with presence and personality that lets us clearly follow its course through each sequence, and having everything be driven in raw, visual narrative: the action here isn't a break from the story, it IS the story. FURY ROAD does for car chases what THE RAID did for hand-to-hand combat.
But it's not just in the action where Miller excels. Something that really helps to set this apart from your average blockbuster is how idiosyncratic and the product of a singular artistic vision it is. The MAD MAX series has always been a bit of an oddball, eccentric mythology, and that continues here on a massive scale. You really get the sense that George Miller has crafted a vast world with a history and culture we'll only know a fragment of, and we've just been thrown into the middle of it, with all these wonderful details that you imagine Miller knows extensive information about and which was thoroughly developed, but which we only see for a fleeting moment in the background, adding color. One example: the heroes drive the war rig through rotten marshland, and in the foreground we see old men walking on all fours on massive stilts through the quicksand-like mire: never explained, but it's a wonderful flourish.
I think some MAD MAX films were more successful than others, but what none of them were ever lacking in was inventiveness and imagination. But it's the kind of deeply strange high concept world-building that I can't quite believe was given such a massive budget to be a tentpole blockbuster by a major Hollywood studio. This is a film where one of the many vehicles in the villain's fleet is a massive stage, with a masked lunatic called The Doof Warrior hanging from a bungee cord, playing an electric guitar that also blasts flames with each power chord, which acts as the soundtrack of the film. Basically: FURY ROAD is, in the best possible way, utterly demented.
The dialogue here is very sparse, characters played in broad shades, and some might think that would mean there's no room for great performances, but I'd disagree. Tom Hardy is on great form. I've seen some say he pales in comparison to Mel Gibson, and of course Mel is the iconic Max, but Hardy brings his own energy to the role to give it a unique spin. His Mad Max leans more heavily on the "mad" part of the equation, less the weathered cynic Gibson portrayed than someone who seems to have been reduced by the world around him to being near animal-like, all grunts and wild, darting eyes... an effect enhanced by the fact he wears a metal muzzle across his face for the first segment of the film. The flashbacks to his tortured past here are sped-up flashes that feel like crazed fever dreams, creating a sense of trippy hysteria that puts us in his unhinged mindset.
But it's Charlize Theron who steals the show as Furiosa. Stoic and badass, but betraying moments of pain and heartbreak with just her face, we learn relatively little of her backstory or motives, and yet we get a pretty firm idea of the life Furiosa has led based on Theron's performance. Just as she inspires those around her in the film to follow her, Furiosa also inspires us to emotionally invest in her and her mission, and really do as an audience. And yet it never feels like a self-conscious "ass-kicking woman!" role, she's just a strong character regardless of gender, someone presented in a lot of ways as a mirror of Max, but maybe just a little less broken. Max sees that, unlike him, she is still capable of hope, and he helps her out of a desire to see that hope kept alive as much as anything else. With this role, Theron can proudly stand Furiosa alongside the likes of Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor and Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley in the canon of great action movie heroines.
I may have singled out Hardy and Theron, but really, every part - large and small - is pitch-perfect. Nicholas Hoult does career best work as fanatical war-boy Nux, playing someone deranged and dangerous, and yet deeply damaged by circumstance so you can't help but feel some compassion for him. Hugh Keays-Bryne - villain Toecutter in the original MAD MAX - returns here to play another remarkably odious monster of a villain in Immortan Joe. And yet, as utterly vile and without redeeming qualities as he is, and as reprehensible as his treatment of his "brides" may be, there are even moments where you almost see the rotten, twisted shred of what's left of his humanity underneath the armor and horrifying mask. Even the various smaller parts - from imbecilic man-child henchman Rictus Erectus to the women of the Vuvalini tribe - have little moments where they shine. Again, it's a beautifully-realised world down to every detail, including the characters.
Really, just about every aspect of this film I could write a paragraph praising. The one other thing I want to give special mention to is the soundtrack, performed by Junkie XL (with the occasional enhancement from The Doof Warrior!), which acts as a thundering, pulse-pounding heartbeat for the movie... rousing stuff. The film really manages to be a delight for the ears as well as the eyes.
In closing, here is what I believe is the biggest compliment I can bestow upon MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. When I was a young kid, and I experienced the MAD MAX movies for the first time, I remember thinking of the climactic chases of THE ROAD WARRIOR and BEYOND THUNDERDOME (I didn't catch the first film until I was a little older) as being impossibly huge, the biggest action spectacle my young eyes had ever witnessed. Even as I generally forgot the movies as a whole, those sequences stuck with me, and inflated the MAD MAX series in my mind as a dizzying benchmark for cinematic action sequences, sheer death-defying, breath-caught-in-your-throat event cinema. And I've rewatched those films recently, and I still admire those sequences, and I still think THE ROAD WARRIOR is a great film, but it isn't as impossibly huge as you remember it being as a kid: with the experience of an adult, you can look at those sequences and see the age, and the points where the budget was pushed to the limit. Though of course you still admire the great technical achievement. So, here's the compliment... MAD MAX: FURY ROAD feels like that impossible spectacle of a film that I remembered the earlier MAD MAX films being from my early experience of seeing them in my formative years.
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is an action masterpiece. Go see it, and, trust me on this, go see it in the cinema. Don't wait for DVD, PLEASE don't torrent it onto your computer. This is a film that should be seen on as big a screen as you can find. If at all possible, see it in 3D IMAX, it's worth it. An exhilarating experience, one that had me on the edge of my seat and gasping with awe throughout. This, for me, is pure cinema.
10/10
. Really nice review.
It felt real, that the protagonists would do away with preordained roles (gender roles, societal roles, etc) and just do what needs to get done to survive in such a world.
