Movie Review 'Mad Max: Fury Road': It is a high-octane chase unlike any other

Those who’ve been writing about/waiting for the latest film in the Mad Max franchise — Fury Road — have all commented on the act of irony that nearly delayed the film even further (it was stuck in development for over 25 years, and is being released 30 years after the last Mad max film, Thunderdome, which starred Mel Gibson): The region in Australia where the movie was to be filmed had its first rain showers in several decades, and where there should have been a barren red desert, there were suddenly fields of flowers. So director George Miller moved the crew and cast to Namibia where they would get the arid wasteland look they wanted.

It’s an irony of course, because the Mad Max films are set in a parched world that has pretty much beean destroyed by wars over fossil fuels (catch up on the story so far here). There are no more forests or trees or vegetation, except for the plants painstakingly and expensively grown in the hothouses of the very powerful. Access to “guzzoline”, water and of course, weaponry, is power. And Fury Road’s arch villain, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), has these in plenty. He rules over the poor residents of the Citadel and his army of “war boys” (kamikaze fighters whose greatest mission is to die for their leader, become immortal and gain entry to Valhalla) and even his “wives” (referred to more accurately perhaps as his “prize breeders”, for Immortan Joe has many things, but is somewhat lacking in an adequate line of male heirs).

Enter Max (Tom Hardy taking over from Mel Gibson), haunted by the deaths of his family, who he failed to protect. He just about manages to survive in the desert, until he is captured by a party of Immortan Joe’s war boys and forced into servitude as a “blood bag” (quite literally; he serves as a blood bank for war boys who need transfusions).

In the meantime, the Citadel is going to war. One of Immortan Joe’s trusted commanders, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) has made away with his war rig — and his pregnant Wives, who wished to escape. The battle cry goes out, the forces are mobilised and they set off in their juiced-up rides (these vehicle are so outré, Pimp My Ride has nothing on them ). Max is taken along as he’s still intravenously hooked up to one of the war boys — Nux (Nicholas Hoult). And so begins a two-hour chase sequence that is unlike anything you’ve ever witnessed.

Looking at Mad Max: Fury Road makes you realise just what has been missing from action movies — even the biggest blockbusters — for so long now. They do not even begin to compare to the adrenaline rush, the almost unhinged sequences that unfold in Fury Road (most of it which has been shot with practical effects, with CGI kept to a bare minimum). As Furiosa and Max join forces and fight to keep the Wives safe from the hordes of war parties that are following them, what you experience is true, unremitting, edge-of-the-seat thrills. To keep the fighting spirit going among the war boys, a giant truck fitted with amplifiers travels with them — slaves thump out a battle beat on six humongous drums, a war boy with an electric guitar that shoots flares off its fender keeps a cacophonous riff going (cue the mind-bending soundtrack by Junkie XL). And so it goes…

Unlike your run-of-the-mill action films, Fury Road does not trade off character development for stunts. Hardy’s Max (a competent performance indeed) is the only character that isn’t delved into in detail here — probably because fans of the series are already aware of his back-story. But Theron’s Furiosa is another story. She fronts a big-budget action movie better than a man could (something that has apparently ticked off men’s rights activists who’ve asked that their brethren not watch the film). In her defense of the Wives, filmgoers are already reading all kinds of feminist philosophies, but even if you weren’t to look too deep, Furiosa is one bad**s character without even considering her gender. Nicholas Hoult plays Nux, the Immortan Joe-worshipping war boy, with all the kookiness the part needs. His frequent attempts to “kamikaze” himself would be courageous, if they weren’t so depraved. The themes the film builds on — the suicidal nature of violence, the power struggles over oil (part of the delay over Fury Road was because of the war in Iraq), climate change and conservation — are never explicitly stated, but their consequences are visible in the dystopian world its characters inhabit.

In one of his interviews, George Miller spoke about the problem he had with post-apocalyptic films: They were always leached of colour. This certainly seems true when you consider the better-known movies in the genre, like Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, where there is a dull, monochromatic tone throughout. Miller, however, saturates every scene with colour — even when what’s in the frame is a sandstorm or a vast salt plain, or the revved up rides or rocket flares the characters use. It suits the super-charged pace of the film (which was co-written by comic book writer Brendan McCarthy) perfectly. A friend who watched Fury Road described it as being “on steroids” and that’s a fairly apt phrase.

Even as the characters in Fury Road fight to seek redemption, or to sustain a fragile measure of hope, they give you a thrilling ride — quite possibly the best ride at the movies for a long time to come.