Two rebels – Max (Tom Hardy), a man of action and of few words, and Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a woman who is looking to make it back to her childhood homeland – just might be able to restore order in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken.
Mad Max: Fury Road checks all the ingredients of the Hollywood summer blockbuster but does one better than the likes of Fast & Furious 7 and The Avengers because it manages to bring an artistic vision to proceedings. In creating the world of Mad Max, director George Miller – whose last film was Happy Feet Two – goes well beyond the usual superhero or real-life fantasy set up and makes up a stark post-apocalyptic nether world of sand, thirst, and oil. At its heart, MMFR is a sardonic satire on the state of the planet – global warming, depleting natural resources, and human dereliction in the matters of greed, patriarchy, and general inherent evilness.
Miller also steers away from the need for making characters aspirational for tweens. His hero – not Max, but Furiosa – seeks redemption on behalf of all humankind. She’s not someone whose shoes you want to be in – unlike Captain America – you only root for her because you’re guilty of all things she’s finally fighting against.
All of this is encapsulated in dialogue that maybe adds up to 20 or 30 minutes in the film. The rest is just one big chase involving improvised automobiles, technicolor explosions, and a relentless guitarist who often steals the show. Miller oscillates between long periods of heart-pumping action with dramatic visuals to moments of silence and an absence of movements with dramatic visuals. None of this bores for a single second.
Another big victory for this biggie is that Miller achieves all of this without any nudity, swearing, or bloody violence. The Disneyfication of all summer movies has lately become a joke with every film being basically made for an audience whose average physical and mental age is 8. MMFR’s 70-year captain manages to satisfy the 8 year old and most likely his peers because it works at multiple levels. Am not saying it will become a classic, but it will be remembered for shaking up the monotony of the formula that is VFX+Hero Mission vs Aliens/Crime syndicates+Destroy cities.
English, Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Color
