Mad Max: Fury Road
Directed by:
George MillerCinematography:
John SealeComposer:
Tom HolkenborgCast:
Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoë Kravitz, Riley Keough, Josh Helman, Nathan Jones, Megan Gale (more)Plots(1)
A apocalyptic story set in the furthest reaches of our planet, in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, and most everyone is crazed fighting for the necessities of life. Within this world exist two rebels on the run who just might be able to restore order. There's Max, a man of action and a man of few words, who seeks peace of mind following the loss of his wife and child in the aftermath of the chaos. And Furiosa, a woman of action and a woman who believes her path to survival may be achieved if she can make it across the desert back to her childhood homeland. (Warner Bros. US)
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Reviews (22)
It seems that someone at Warner Bros must have gone mad because to approve budget in the amount of an expensive blockbuster for a 70-year-old director who has not made any feature film (let alone action or high-budget) for almost twenty years, that even includes bizarre scenes (breast milk, flamethrower guitar!) "from the world after the fall of values" filled with psychedelic metal opera/road movie madness about mad guys (on top of that hidden "remake" of the General), which is a continuation of his own amateurish “Grindhouse-like" cult post apocalypses trilogy, it requires a lot of courage. What is the most surprising is not the above-mentioned but rather fact that the new Mad Max is not a ridiculous dull follow-up or an indecent smooth derivative of the original trilogy, but it is an unusually confidently made straightforward (not to be confused with dull!) "dirty movie" (basically a mix of the ending of the second movie extended to full-length footage, Doomsday, Wages of Fear and Spaghetti Western in an unprecedented and a world that is depicted in detail where madness is the standard and not the eccentricity) with playfully inventive and imaginative non-stop action, which is not just an empty mandatory filler, as it is typical for most blockbusters today, but there is something special about it and moves the story forward; moreover, it way it is shot is captivating, independent and clear. Thanks to which the fourth Max movie becomes an instant genre classic. It will take you back to a time when this type of film did not mean over-the-top CGI adventures with no a stuntman (let alone an actor) at all. On the contrary, this movie has everything that a great movie of 80s show have in all respects. The only difference is the possibilities and budget corresponding to the 21st century and with the best action heroine "who is not just a guy with breasts" from the times of Ripley from the first Alien. It is sad that such a movie is only a kind of unrepeatable studio anomaly, but because of this we should admire (of even love) the fourth Max even more. PS: Refined Mad Max: Fury Road Black and Chrome Edition is a great watch, which is easy to believe that Miller wanted it like this from the beginning.
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I've never been a big fan of movies with big attractions and effects and it's just something I'm not into. However, every now and then I let myself be enticed by dazzling visuals, as evidenced by my rating of the first Pirates of the Caribbean. However, I need a meaningful story and well-written characters for that. In the case of Mad Max: Fury Road, there is practically no story, the characters' motivations are, to put it mildly, weak, and the characters themselves serve only as tools for the director to shape an endless series of action scenes and evoke the simplest of emotions. They are mere controlling elements of the vehicles, ready to be attackers or victims for the entertainment of the audience. The mythos of the depicted world is highly reduced, and it is clear that the director does not expect anyone to ask questions or, God forbid, use their brain while watching his film. You would search in vain for any logical structure in the world depicted by him. While in the case of the new circus, there is a tendency to build a plot from uncomplicated acrobatic acts, to tell a story, and thus move towards theater and film art, Mad Max, on the other hand, operates on the principle of a classic circus performance. Here, the action genre has stripped away all impurities and exposed itself in its essence. Mad Max will be appreciated by viewers focused on dynamism and action, top-notch acrobatics, and choreography. For the target audience, the film can offer excellent camera work and clear editing, beautiful women, machines with powerful engines, and adrenaline. This is not nothing, and I understand that it can excite many male viewers. But I need a lot more for a film experience. Overall impression: 30%.
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Men in chains. Mad Max: Fury Road is entertaining as a film about a bunch of psychopaths chasing each other through the desert can be. The film’s greatest strength is rooted in its greatest betrayal. For at least half of the film, the titular protagonist is a pacified and passive supporting character who certainly has no bearing on the direction of the story despite introducing it with his own words (unlike in the second Mad Max, the scope of the narrative isn’t tied nearly as closely to Max – rather, we are “insolently” informed of one of his actions only by a big explosion somewhere in the distance). Women are in the driver’s seat, in both the literal and figurative sense. They are beautiful and scantily clad (like most of the other characters, so I wouldn’t lay blame on the film for employing a double standard), but merciless when it comes to men, who are automatically – and for the most part justifiably – perceived as a threat. Max is no exception, as he wouldn’t even have to have a mask on his face or his wrists in shackles to be mistaken for an animal controlled by instinct. While his goal is summed up from beginning to end in a single word (“survive”), Miller makes maximum use of stylistic techniques to ensure that we experience his survival at first hand (the “relieving” silencing of the music). By comparison, the motivations of the savage women have greater depth and raise numerous questions that you normally wouldn’t ask in relation to action blockbusters. ___ All of the men in the film are to a certain extent obsessed with physical strength, destruction and domination. Dominance over women and over their machines, which evidently intoxicates them as effectively as fresh blood does. The deification and fetishisation of high-performance, high-octane machines, with which their drivers would like to merge (spraying their mouths with chrome wheel paint), are in places pushed beyond the boundary of the most off-the-wall comic stylisation (as are the names of the characters, among which only Sillius Soddus and Biggus Dickus are missing), which is somewhat in conflict with the realistic basis of the depicted world and the raw brutality of the violence. Fury Road is sometimes a bit more and sometimes a bit less of an overwrought opera on four wheels, with massive explosions and chainsaw fights instead of arias. Just as Leone’s spaghetti westerns were operas in their own way. The last time I had a comparably intense impression of uninterrupted action that barely gives you time to breathe was when I saw the South Korean pseudo-spaghetti western The Good, the Bad, the Weird (for its pacing and crazy ideas, Fury Road would deserve the subtitle The Very Bad and the Weird). ___ In connection with the ideas of eco-feminism, the women conversely personify care, creation and the effort to restore humanity’s connection to nature (at one of the critical moments, their lives are saved by a tree). They don’t want to change the rules of the existing world, but to build (or perhaps better said, “let sprout”) a new world founded on protection, cooperation and caring instead of war, control and pillage. Their greatest wealth is not weapons or petrol, but planting seeds. The film is not militantly radical in its advocacy for an alternative life principle – instead of complete separation from men, it proposes partial synthesis as a solution – but it still took some proper courage to make the return of a great action hero a hell of a wild feminist ride. (If the picture hadn’t been unpleasantly dark, I wouldn’t have known about the 3D except for one shot.) Appendix: I believe that someone more qualified will write a more analytical text about the editing of the perfectly rhythmised action scenes and the use of characters as orientators, thanks to which the frenzied action is perfectly clear despite the jumps across the axis. 90%
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Every year I see dozens of films in the cinema and many more at home, and only some of the new ones leave me with the feeling that I've watched something special; something that will be talked about in ten years. Fortunately, Mad Max: Fury Road is one of those. The trailers didn't bullshit, this is a brutal action ride from start to finish. When George Miller said his film was going to be one big chase, he wasn't lying. Even more interesting than the action itself, however, which is exquisite, thrilling and visually original, is what surrounds it. The director of Happy Feet has managed to make a new Mad Max that must satisfy fans of the trilogy and newcomers alike. Fury Road is an almost physically uncomfortable film. Whereas other post-apocalyptic films usually have clearly defined good and evil, here there is only madness, and thanks to some of the characters (Nicholas Hoult gets a career-best role) it's almost palpable. It's a cruel world with bizarre rules, fascinating and repulsive at the same time. Good doesn't exist, evil doesn't exist either, all that's left is a fierce fight for survival. And you will be right in the middle of it. Mad Max grabs you at the beginning, then thrills you, disgusts you, horrifies you and fascinates you all the time. And by the end of it, you'll feel like you've seen something special. Not just entertaining or interesting, but truly exceptional.
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Thirty years is a long time, and George Miller has left the original Mad Max far behind. Not only is Mel Gibson surprisingly sorely missed, given that Tom Hardy's hesitant grumbling moments simply don't work at all, but Fury Road draws on the worst of the echoes of the original trilogy. Namely, the usual bizarreness, flatness of characters, and the fact that it's mostly just about one city and its fate. The fact that this time it's done in a grandiose way through to the last shot results in an audiovisual delight led by a breathtaking motorcycle raid, but without at least one truly interesting character, it's a massacre that simply doesn't mean anything to me outside the basic action layer.
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