Review: Mad Max: Fury Road

IMDb

A desert landscape; a two-headed lizard; a man explaining who he is, yet otherwise quiet. And then we're off! Mad Max: Fury Road has as exciting an opening scene as you'll ever see. From beautiful visuals, a captivating musical score, and having a knack to make you think and ask questions as you're going, the first few minutes of the movie is a great introduction to what you're about to experience for the next 120 minutes.

I've only ever fully watched Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and that was for a film class in college. I've seen bits and pieces of the other two, but do not remember much aside from the post-apocalyptic Australian desert. However, I was hooked since the first trailer I saw of this latest film from George Miller (Happy Feet). It looked great (Miller is considered a visual genius). It sounded amazing (thanks to composer Junkie XL, who also did the soundtrack for 300: Rise of an Empire, and is lending a hand on Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice). I had to see it. Unfortunately, I missed it while it was in theaters, but I had heard of how great a movie it was from critics reviews and friends. So when I had an opportunity to purchase the Blu-Ray the other day, I did not pass it up.

One of the main reasons I wanted to see this movie was Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises). Everyone knows him as Bane, but he's been on my radar as one of the top talents in Hollywood since he played Twombly in Black Hawk Down. He was good in Inception, great in Warrior, but you need to see him in the BBC/Netflix show Peaky Blinders (which stars an incredible Cillian Murphy, also known from the Dark Knight trilogy as Dr. Crane/Scarecrow) Anyways, Hardy proved to us in TDKR that he knows how to act with his eyes and body language, and he does it no better than in Fury Road. His character, the titular Max Rockatansky, is a man of few words. He starts the movie by telling us he is crazy, and then uses the rest of the movie proving just that. Whether it is fighting several men at once, or nearly escaping death on multiple occasions, Max is a character that only needs his physical prowess and cunning to survive.

Plus, you can tell the explosions are real!

As good as Tom Hardy was, he wasn't the one who stole the show for me. Charlize Theron (Snow White and the Huntsman) was an absolute force to be reckoned with in this movie. We know little about her at first, as she only comes off as a gritty rig driver. Yet, as the movie goes on, she quickly shows us who is the strongest character in the movie. A single woman, defying an entire army, leads an exodus for those who need her, and ends the movie a hero for the masses. We know Theron can act, we saw that in Monster, but the emotion she shows in Mad Max, all while kicking ass, is great. You really believe she is doing the best she can for what she believes is right.

Another standout of the movie is Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: Days of Future Past). I truly believe his character, Nux, is the audiences window into this movie. In the first act of the movie, Hoult is going full throttle into his role, running a fine line between religious devotion and insanity, very much like the visual and auditory fine line the audience is presented between artistic beauty and overwhelming nonsense. We are being introduced to this world full of poor, suffering masses and the religious radicals, the Half-Lifes, where you need to do anything to survive. As the second act widens our knowledge of what really is going on with the story and Theron's Imperator Furiosa, Nux begins to question what he is really fighting and living for. His whole life was in service to Immortan Joe, played by Hugh Keays-Byrne (who interestingly enough was in the original Mad Max) on a path to the gates of Valhalla, yet all the fighting and chaos helped reveal how ungodly Immortan Joe really is. It isn't until he runs into Capable, played by Riley Keough (The Good Doctor), that he finds something to fight for, and his emotional arc runs parallel with the third act and helps drive the movie home. I'd like to believe he finally made it to the gates of Valhalla.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a good movie. Between George Miller and Junkie XL, they created a world that amazed both your eyes and ears. This is an action movie that never stops, that has your attention from the first scene to the last. However, the story is weak, and at times confusing. I do not believe we know enough about the villain to hate him (other than the fact he looks repulsing). We are told that he treats his wives badly, and that we want them to be saved, and that he is the typical religiously, radical dictator that you're taught to not like. But why is he doing what he's doing? Why are his men chasing Max in the beginning? This movie creates more questions than answers, but I think that is a good thing. It makes me want to see another installment that much more.

Finally, despite the title, this movie is not about Max. There is nothing wrong with that. This is Furiosa's movie, through and through, and Max is just a vessel to help her find her redemption. And that is just how the character has been throughout the franchise. Max just ends up being at the right place at the right time, or maybe the wrong place, and helps those who need it most. He only helps Furiosa because he's trying to get home, but so is she. And when the movie ends with her where she belongs, we see Max disappear into the crowd, presumably, and finally, on his way home.

Rating: B+

Also staring: Josh Helman (X-Men: Days of Future Past), Nathan Jones (Troy, plus hes 6'11" and 360 lbs...damn), Zoe Kravitz (The Divergent Series), and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (Transformers: Dark of the Moon)

"Where must we go... we who wander this Wasteland in search of our better selves?" 

-The First History Man