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| Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) |
Alright, so this film is gorgeous. Holy crap, the full 2-hour runtime of this film is set in a desert, and it never once got stale or bland, and I have no idea how they pulled that off. I think part of it may be the cinematography, or the colours at night, or the lighting effects, or probably a combination of the above, but this film is a treat for the eyes. It's also a treat for the ears, and it's easy to hear why this film won 2 Oscars for its audio component alone. Yes, the soundtrack is great, but its more down to the mix of the music with the roaring engines, the ear-splitting electric guitar, the war drums, oh, my God, it's just the perfect cacophony of high-octane noise that masterfully blends together in the best way possible. More than that, though, is when the sound effects cut out for the more serious moments, and this helps those moments stand apart from the rest of the movie. The visual editing also helps here, and there's another Oscar right there. This particularly shines through in Max's moments that I'll discuss a little more later, but trust me, it's all great stuff. This might be George Miller's finest work, and the bigger budget over the previous three Mad Max movies is certainly welcome here.
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| Nicholas Hoult as Nux |
The action scenes are phenomenal. You can't really call them action 'scenes', though. The entire movie basically functions as one long chase scene, and, again, the fact that it never once got stale is mind-blowing to me. There are moments of down-time on the way, and they do break for a chunk before the third act, but essentially once the chase begins it doesn't stop. I'm relieved to see that the practical effects didn't go out the window with the smaller budget, and these stunts are jaw-droppingly effective. People are climbing underneath trucks, balancing on long poles and dangling between the cars, there's a f***ing fire-spitting electric guitar! It's just the right amount of crazy, and it does make sense with the world. Of course people would go crazy after an apocalypse. The good thing is that it knows exactly how crazy it needs to be, and never goes too far into the deep end for its own good. There are also quite a lot of genuinely shocking moments in here. You'd expect a movie that's just one long action scene to be predictable, but no. I didn't know where it was going. There are moments here that actually left me breathless, and that's an impressive feat.
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| Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe |
Max Rockatansky is back, and for obvious reasons, Mel Gibson didn't return, with the role being taken over by Tom Hardy, and he does a wonderful job. He doesn't sound 100% like Mel Gibson did, but what really won me over is the fact that he had so many of Max's mannerisms down to a tee, particularly when he's trapped in the mask for the first act. You really get the sense that Hardy did his homework and he nailed it. This is also an interesting take on the character, as we get the sense that Max has taken a darker turn since we last saw him, and we get a lot of psychedelic flashbacks that seem to be haunting him. We don't need to know exactly what happened, we get the sense of it pretty early on. All that's important is how it shapes the character, and his arc throughout the film is very interesting. Though, it's not as interesting as Nicholas Hoult's arc, and Hoult does a fantastic job in this role. He brings a lot of humanity to this crazy maniac, and there's enough there early on that we can really sympathise with him when things go sour for him. His journey in this film is probably the most compelling singular narrative in the film, and he's certainly the one that has the most growth by the end. It's also nice that they brought back Hugh Keays-Byrne from the first film, and though it's a completely different character to the Toecutter, Joe is another top-notch villain. He's in the vein of a lot of the other Mad Max villains we've gotten: a cult leader who controls the resources in their area, yet they do a surprising amount of emotion with this character as well. It's never enough to get you to sympathise with him, but there are enough layers here that I can appreciate how they handled him.
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| Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky |
But, if we're talking characters, it's Furiosa all the way. Charlize Theron owns this role, and she's easily the best character here. It's Furiosa, moreso than Max, that drives this narrative, and it really is her film. Her narrative is a fairly simple one, yet when the emotion hits, oh boy, it hits hard. It's even more impressive when you consider that they only introduced her backstory at about the halfway mark, and yet 20 or so minutes later, it pays off in an extraordinary way, going back to the sound editing I mentioned earlier. It's also through Theron's character that we get the themes and, I must say, for 'just an action movie', there's a surprising amount of really strong themes here. I'm not going to say what they are, since it could be considered a spoiler, but they all pay off by the end, leading to probably one of the most satisfying endings to a movie that I've seen. Seriously, I have nothing negative to say here. It all just works.
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| Charlize Theron as Furiosa |
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) was a fantastic way to end the month. This is everything I look for in an action movie, and in a movie in general. Brilliant stuff. 10/10.
Next: a recap of the month.
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