Mad Max: Fury Road Film Review

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Mad Max: Fury Road is a post-apocalyptic action film directed by veteran director George Miller and stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. Hardy plays the titular Max – a disturbed nomad of few words but many punches - and Theron is Furiosa – a battle hardened woman with a plan – both of whom are looking to escape the greasy clutches of presiding tyrant Immortan Joe.

Fury Road is the forth in a series of films, all made by director George Miller, which started way back in 1979 and made Mel Gibson as a household name. This entry acts as a sort of re-imagining and finds Hardy taking over the role Gibson made famous. I'll hold my hands up now and admit that I haven't seen the previous three films all the way through – I know, I know, I really should have by now, but I haven't.

I've got an understanding of the main themes and iconography of the franchise and the good news here and is that you don't really much more than that in order to understand and appreciate this film. The film's title tells you everything you need to know: a) this film is mental and b) it essentially boils down to one giant, adrenaline fuelled car chase.

If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, and I can understand a lot of people won't be, then you're definitely going to like this film. If a film is going to almost entirely consist of a chase then the action needs to be good, damn good. And in this regard it does not disappoint. The chase scenes, fist fights and shoot-outs (sometimes all occurring at once) are fantastic – fast but compensable, visceral but fun.

These scenes are made all the better by the decision to use practical effects as much as possible – grounding the action and making you feel every crash, explosion and stunt. The film exists in a dystopian future ravaged by nuclear war and it's harsh, unforgiving depiction of the violent world such an event would surely create was much appreciated. But unlike, say, The Road or The Walking Dead, which both provide similarly grim worlds, Fury Road feels vibrant, deranged with an almost steam-punk vibe.

This unique tone was refreshing, especially given that it's being billed as, and has the budget of, a summer tent-pole film. Fury Road also looks amazing. Glorious wide angle shots of the wasteland, jaw dropping imagery (that sand storm – wow), downright grimy costume and make-up and lush cinematography all create a world that feels desperate and dark whilst also being beautiful to look at.

Despite clocking in at two hours, and as mentioned is basically just one long extended action scene, it doesn't feel it at all – the pacing is as furious as the road and it kept be engaged from start to finish. This fast pace is aided immensely by a pounding war cry of a score which is often diagetically provided by characters in the film itself. 

All of these elements combine to overwhelm the senses – in a good way. The film kicks and screams at you until it finally lets you go, wobbling away from the cinema in utter shell-shock.

An aspect that came as a pleasant surprise was the treatment of female characters in the film. First and foremost is Furiosa – a complete and utter bad-ass yes, but also a complicated character who serves as the film's emotional core. And it is here that Theron steals the show, displaying her usual versatility and range as an actor to devastating effect.

The film is also at pains to show the exploitation that women would likely face in this world – with Miller even recruiting Eve Ensler, writer of The Vagina Monologues, as a consultant on the matter. The director goes a step further still with the introduction of an ecologically-minded, feminist biker gang who, after joining Max and Furiosa's fight, made the film, for me at least, about a million times more exciting.

Along with Miller's strong emphasis on sexual politics there are also other interesting sub-texts at play concerning class struggle, ecology and religion. The last thing I'll say in praise of the film is that it's amazing it's turned out so well considering the circumstances surrounding it.

- It's a reboot of a thirty year old franchise which feels both faithful and modern.
- It's an alternative, violent piece of cinema which has been created within the Hollywood industrial complex.
- It lost it's synonymous lead actor but Tom Hardy has mostly been met with open arms.
- And there were various, widely reported on problems on set which protracted the length of the shoot.

On top of it all Miller is pushing seventy and has still made an action film so slick, so alive, that it puts most other directors half his age to shame. The odds were stacking incredibly high against this film and the fact that it turned out as well as it did is nothing short of a miracle.

Having said all of that I still didn't quite fall head-over-heels in love with it. Other than the fury road of the title the main setting is The Citadel – a city borne from the ashes of the world and ruled over by the dictatorship of Immortan Joe. The imagery surrounding this location is fantastic but the world building and logic is far less so. Given that the film tries hard to make it's action feel so real it's a shame it couldn't do the same for it's wider universe.

Although overall I really liked the action scenes but the intermittent use of a higher frame rate felt out of place, cheap and unnecessary. I'd also liked to have seen and felt the violence a bit more – some of the more horrific moments only lasted a few frames or when hidden off-screen. There was a high body count but it mostly consisted of henchmen being thrown like puppets to the wind - there wasn't enough crunch for me.

My other main issue was with the characters. This film didn't need Max, simple as that. Furiosa was the heart of the film and Max, although being really cool, already felt secondary. Cut Max, focus more on Furiosa, keep it in the same world and simply call it Fury Road.

On that note – Hardy was decent as Max, especially physically, but whenever he spoke he did the same weird, slightly-off vocal performance that he did for Bane where he tries to inject eccentricity into a character that doesn't need it. 

Next up, Nux.  I could see what they were trying to do with this supporting character but it didn't work for me. I'm not sure if it was Nicholas Hoult's delivery or just simply how the character was written but I found him more annoying than interesting and his love story sub-plot was incredibly groan-worthy.

Which leads me onto the characters of the wives. They were decently done but some things didn't quite match up. Their dialogue also skewed more towards annoying teenager than traumatised, sheltered sex slave and I ended up disliking most of them.

My final issue with the film is heavily subjective in that in many ways it just wasn't to my taste. I love crazy and alternative but not this type of crazy and alternative. Sometimes the madness of it felt too wacky and silly for me personally.

It's draws very heavily from the genre of the western, a genre I've always struggled with, is very motor-centric, again something I'm really not interested in, and focuses slightly too much on action at the expense of emotional character development for my taste.

I was so ready to love Mad Max and I really liked a lot of things about it but ultimately, besides some genuine issues, it was a case of an acquired taste that I simply don't have and I'm going to give it a 7/10.