+ Best Australian Movie of the Year
+ Best Comeback of the Year: George Miller
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| Charlize Theron loudly set on prevailing on this poster for George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road |
Australian filmmaker George Miller's debut feature Mad Max (1979), which he followed with sequels in 1981 and 1985, now gets a reboot, by Miller himself, now a 70 year-old man.
In a desolate future, two fierce outcasts join forces to reach a green nirvana with the five wives of the tyrant Immortan Joe, whose small army are on their trail.
Miller has tried to get Fury Road off the ground since he got the idea for it in 1998! The film has been scrapped and pushed back due to several factors: 9/11, the second American Iraq war, Mel Gibson's personal travails, Heath Ledger's 2008 death etc. etc.
Now that it's here, it's a glorious, gasoline-pumped beast of a movie; a car chase-action-adventure with some of the most hair-raising action scenes of later years. The film, which was shot on location in the desert of Namibia, Africa, is almost 'just' one long chase, so the action had better work, and it sure does. From the outset, when Max SPOILER eats a two-headed lizard, to the end a couple of hours later, we're strapped onto a hell of a roller coaster ride here.
The film is shot by John Seale (The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)) in ways that make you grab the handles of your seat time and time again, and scored by Junkie XL (300: Rise of an Empire (2014)) to enhance the experience. The stunt work is eye-popping, and the dystopia so grim that it's hard to watch the film and not think about its implicit portrayal of human nature as destructive, exploitative and brutal.
- The punchline to all of this is, of course, that Miller is also the man behind such rosy family movies as Babe: Pig in the City (1998) and Happy Feet (2006) and Happy Feet 2 (2011).
Many have called Fury Road feminist, which is a strange thing to call it, I think, just because it has a strong female and several good female performances in it.
One of the film's many delights is towards its end SPOILER to follow our heroes, who have now banded up with a few old ladies, attack and make their way despite being warred against by a legion of strong males. This may strike some as feminist; I relished it more because it was something I hadn't seen before, and the many people behind the scenario made it seem believable.
Tom Hardy (Bronson (2008)) plays Max, and Charlize Theron (Monster (2003)) is Furiosa, who is actually a much more particular and engaging character. This is a problem for a film that is still called Mad Max: Fury Road. Hardy doesn't have Gibson's natural likability and charm (of the previous three movies), and Max's back-story here only gets presented in some frightening but not very informative flash-backs. Miller has chosen in his script, which he has co-written with Brendan McCarthy (ReBoot (1995-96)) and Nick Lathouris, that Max shouldn't say almost anything, and so Hardy has his work cut out for him trying to form a strong hero here. The film's ending is also a little rushed, but all of Fury Road is actually somewhat rushed, so this may be appropriate.
These things aside, Theron and British Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man (2009)), who plays a drug-crazed but basically good kid, are great in Fury Road, and Hugh Keays-Burne (Kangaroo (1987)) is incredible as the despicable villain, sure to become iconic, because he is so hard to forget. - Great designs also adorn this surprising summer smash.
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| Hugh Keays-Burne as Immortan Joe (the villain if you were wondering ...) in George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road |
Cost: 150 mil. $
Box office: 109.4 mil. $ and counting
= Still unsure
[But as Fury Road has only been out for three days, it seems certain that it is set to become a big hit: Although it only opened #2 in the US, behind Pitch Perfect 2 (2015), it still made 44.4 mil. $ in its opening weekend there and opened #1 in 40 other countries with critics and audiences welcoming it with the highest level of enthusiasm.]
What do you think of Mad Max: Fury Road?
And Miller's other films?
Do you think he is the mastermind that the trailers crown him?
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