Mad Max: Fury Road : Movie Review


Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) - Movie PosterThirty years after Mel Gibson's stoic savior Max Rockatansky walked off into the sunset and Tina Turner crooned "We Don't Need Another Hero" at the end of 1985's "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome," mainstay director George Miller (2006's "Happy Feet") has brought the post-apocalyptic franchise trucking back to life with the innovative, sensationally mounted "Mad Max: Fury Road." Decidedly more reboot than sequel to 1980's low-budget, comparatively quaint "Mad Max" and 1981's zanier, stunt-heavy "Mad Max 2" (a.k.a. "The Road Warrior"), this sizzling $150-million extravaganza picks up in a futuristic desert wasteland where water has replaced gas as the hottest commodity of all. With dialogue kept to a nitty-gritty minimum, Miller and co-writers Brendan McCarthy and Nick Lathouris cut very quickly to the literal chase, a roaring, full-throttle, 120-minute action set-piece that threatens to lose a little of its captivating hold whenever time is taken out to let the hard-scrabble, no-nonsense characters breathe.

In the bowels of Machiavellian oasis the Citadel, Max (Tom Hardy) has been violently branded the property of ruthless tyrant Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), used as a "blood bag" to transfuse one of Joe's brainwashed minions, Nux (Nicholas Hoult). A man haunted by the loss of his daughter, he now has only one goal: survival. As it turns out, Max's dire situation coincides with Imperator Furiosa's (Charlize Theron) high-stakes bid for freedom and redemption. Having just rescued five young women—Splendid (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), Toast (Zoë Kravitz), Capable (Riley Keough), Cheedo (Courtney Eaton) and The Dag (Abbey Lee)—from a life of servitude and sexual enslavement at the hands of the lascivious Joe, Furiosa has gone rogue. Taking a sharp left turn toward the east in her giant war rig, she barrels across the scorched and barren earth with Joe and his crazed henchmen—and another gang in spiky death machines who do not take kindly to trespassers—hot on their tail. When Max manages to escape and joins forces with Furiosa and the girls (some of them pregnant with their master's babies), their only hope is to make it to salvation in a location known as "The Green Place" before their unforgiving pursuers catch up to them.

See Dustin Putman, TheFilmFile.com. for full review

Author : Dustin Putman, TheFilmFile.com.