Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

It’s often said that actions speak louder than words, and such is the case with Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller’s awe inspiringly demented return to the Wacky Races.

The plot, such as it is, hinges on what is essentially a two hour car chase, a pyretic pursuit across the vast, boundless breadth of the Namibian desert. An unfeasibly armoured lorry, the War Rig, is driven by renegade Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and Max (Tom Hardy); staving off infinite attacks from the War Boys, a squad of freaks giving chase in a bevy of souped-up hot-rods. The cause of this bothersome affair is a harem of five brusque yet beautiful concubines, unceremoniously stolen from king of the freaks, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) with hopes of escaping to some vague Shangri-La.

Miller spent the better part of two decades painstakingly piecing his film together, storyboarding, writing, dipping in and out of preproduction so many times it’s a wonder it ever saw the cameras at all. And yet, with his impressive army of stunt-folk, hundreds of hours of footage and a plethora of shooting and editing styles he has crafted an exquisite ode to the art of film-making.

Fury Road may be the fourth in a franchise, but it comes refreshingly free of impedimenta. Almost entirely omitting any expository run in, Max, and by extension the audience, are thrown into the wringer right from the get-go.

This time out the Road Warrior is portrayed by Tom Hardy, Mel Gibson ironically probably now too Mad to occupy the role. Hardy’s Max is pricklier, gruffer, and generally wilder than the Gibson incarnation, a force of mostly silent ruination, drifting into the melee almost by accident. It’s a rare occurrence when Hardy gets to speak, and when he does it’s in a primal growl, monosyllabic and almost mournful. Hardy lets his eyes and body do the talking.

He’s also seemingly a supporting character in his own film, ancillary in most regards to metal-armed MVP Charlize Theron. Perhaps the greatest heroine since Ellen Ripley, Theron’s Furiosa is the more engaging of the two leads - she’s more human, more desperate and ultimately lends a surprising emotional heft to proceedings. One could even argue that upon her shoulders Fury Road becomes a bona-fide feminist blockbuster: a film about the liberation of women held against their will as baby making slaves from a malevolent and tyrannical patriarch.

Nicholas Hoult rounds out the core trio with an admirably bonkers (and almost unrecognisable) turn as a strangely endearing WarBoy, while Hugh Keays-Byrne’s hams it up as the masked Immortan Joe - coming out just the right side of exuberantly repugnant. Elsewhere, Miller populates the film with a dizzying plethora of nutcases and circus freaks; the contender for best of the bunch - perhaps even the greatest supporting role of the year - a now infamous masked musician, swinging gleefully atop a truck, issuing forth an endless stream of power chords from a flaming guitar.

Indeed, Fury Road reaches its most dizzying and inventive heights when it throws all caution to the wind - when any reflections on character or message are cast aside in favour of a dizzying onslaught of insane stunt work and glorious practical effects. Our heroes’ racing into a gigantic, hellish firestorm, like an insect sucked into a volcanic eruption, the image lingers in the memory as a visual highlight in a film full of gorgeous work. And yet, in spite of all his carnage Miller never loses track of what’s going on, with an efficient clarity often missing from more recent mega budget effects behemoths.

Ultimately, Fury Road is an uncompromisingly entertaining cinematic achievement, beautifully shot, wildly inventive and even gently thought provoking. The best blockbuster of the summer.

5/5