Mad Max: Fury Road—Movie Review

by Peter J. O'Connell

Mad Max: Fury Road. Released: May 15, 2015. Runtime: 120 mins. Rated: R for intense sequences of violence throughout and for disturbing images.

Australian cinema began to attract the attention of discerning filmgoers internationally in the 1970s. (Before then who even knew that there was such a thing as “Australian cinema”?) But that cinema really exploded from Down Under into the consciousness of mass audiences and onto screens worldwide in the 1980s with the Mad Max trilogy: Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981), and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). These postapocalyptic, ultraviolent, hyperkinetic films brought critical acclaim to director/writer George Miller and superstardom to lead actor Mel Gibson. They also had great and continuing influence on films in the action and science-fiction genres.

Now, after a hiatus of 30 years, there is a fourth entry in the epic, Mad Max: Fury Road. Max (played now by Tom Hardy—but as at the same age as Gibson in the trilogy) still wanders on his motorcycle, solitary and violent, through the wasteland world created by the “oil wars.” And he is still ready to battle the bizarre bands of barbarians that roam that world. But agents of a warlord, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), manage to capture Max and bring him to Joe's Citadel. At the Citadel Joe uses his control of the “three major resources”--gasoline, bullets, water—to rule over masses of dehydrated wretches. An array of shirtless, tattooed, white-painted baldies—the War Boys—act as Joe's enforcers. The look of life (if you can call it that) at the Citadel seems to combine elements from such films as Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) and a potpourri of '50s sword-and-sandal sagas. But everything is given an original spin by Miller. For example, Joe is costumed, and his costume includes a mask that seems to combine both a skull and a horse's head, while also having the look of a front view of a motorcycle.

An important agent of Immortan Joe's is Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who drives a tanker truck. The beauteous Theron, originally a model from South Africa, has developed an estimable acting career, including several roles as a tough character. (She received an Oscar for playing a serial killer in 2003's Monster.) Here she is a very tough character indeed, with beauty obscured by brush cut, one arm a prothesis, axle grease for eye shadow.

But Furiosa has determined to rescue Joe's Breeders—some lovely young women in diaphanous robes—from his harem and take them to The Green Place, which she has a vague recollection of from her childhood, before she had to live in the deserts that came to dominate the landscape. Concealing the young women in her tanker, she sets off on the metaphorical Fury Road, pursued by a wild and wooly posse of Immortan Joe's forces. Max, for his part, finds himself strapped to the front of one of the posse's vehicles as a kind of hood ornament. (A rock guitarist plays frenziedly on the front of another of the War Boys' War Rigs.)

The garb of the posse ranges from the austere shirtlessness of the War Boys to outfits that seem to mix and match (not!) fashions from homeless shelters, KISS-type bands, and the Greenwich Village Halloween parade. The War Rigs also are hybrids. They comprise bits and pieces from: agricultural.construction/military vehicles; monster cars and trucks; '50s big and befinned “dream cars”; stock car jalopies; drag racing “muscle cars”; and more! Many are rocket-powered to boot.

The superbly cinematographed War Rigs' chase of Furiosa and the young women across trackless wastes is truly a sight to behold,  behold with jaws agape. So, too, are the chase's innumerable spectacular crashes and brutal fights. Miller, for the most part, shuns the computer-generated imagery that other action and sci-fi epics overuse and relies instead on superb stunt work, constituting in some cases stunning acrobatic achievements. (Some of his cast are from Cirque de Soleil.)

Eventually, both Max and Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of the War Boys, manage to get onto Furiosa's rig. The changing relationships between Max and Nux and each of them and Furiosa and the women add to the virtually nonstop action but also provide the few breaks in that action.

Miller's movies are often described as “over the top” and “hallucinatory.” Miller himself has been described as a “visionary” filmmaker. When the man from Down Under looks over the top, what does he see—and make us, through his creative imagination, see? Is it hallucinations? Actually, no. Like the great medieval painter Hieronymus Bosch, Miller presents gripping images of people in this world who already are in hell but don't necessarily know it. And like all great works of science fiction or future fantasy, Miller's world of the future is essentially a projection of realities already present in today,s world.

The world of the Mad Max movies is brutal and bizarre, but we today also have barbarians committing atrocities in desert lands. Consider, too, what phenomena occur when we carry to extremes gun culture, car culture, motorcycle culture, the culture of tattoos and piercings, rock/rap culture, extreme martial arts, etc. And we, too, have to contemplate the possibility of global destruction.

Yet the genius of George Miller is such that he shows us that the possibility of love and liberation can still exist, even at the end of Fury Road. See the movie to see how.

“Footnotes” to the film: (1) Even the notoriously bleak Outback of his native Australia was, apparently, not bleak enough for Miller. He did much of the location filming of Mad Max: Fury Road in the desert regions of Namibia and South Africa. (2) Miller, who is also a physician, showed a kinder, gentler side to his filmmaking in the years between Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and Mad Max: Fury Road. Among other works, he wrote, directed and produced the humanistic Lorenzo's Oil; wrote and produced the family friendly Babe; and wrote, directed and produced Babe: Pig in the City and the animated classics Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two.