Mad Max: Fury Road

Man, what a rush. With the dust set­tled on what has sure­ly been an exhaust­ing 25-year devel­op­ment peri­od full of false starts and spec­u­la­tion, George Miller emerges from the semi-cor­rod­ed direc­tor-for-hire wreck­age of his own career – defi­ant­ly and tri­umphant­ly slam­ming the throt­tle for­ward on the fran­chise that made his name. The engine may have been com­plete­ly stripped and rebuilt using new­ly acquired parts, but the result is noth­ing short of awe­some. A super­charged spec­ta­cle that races through the gears deliv­er­ing shot after shot of gaso­line-laced adren­a­line direct to the heart. It is, per­haps sur­pris­ing­ly, a sin­gu­lar­ly enter­tain­ing mod­ern blockbuster.

Some fans under­stand­ably ques­tioned whether too much time had passed, if there was any­thing to be gained from strap­ping in for one last ride across the scorched plains of this sem­i­nal post-apoc­a­lyp­tic saga. Any such fears are laid to rest with­in the fran­tic open­ing few min­utes of Mad Max: Fury Road, when Max Rock­atan­sky (Tom Hardy) is chased down and cap­tured by a gang of scur­ry­ing, snarling ​“War Boys” – an accursed V8 cult ruled by the tyran­nous Immor­tan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). This is a world beyond Thun­der­dome, a stark post-civil­i­sa­tion after­life where oil runs clear­er than water, a place where all hope has been extin­guished. In this waste­land of the damned, our epony­mous pro­tag­o­nist – unable to escape the ghosts of his past – stands alone. The Road War­rior ren­dered Lone Wanderer.

Redemp­tion beck­ons after Max forms an unlike­ly alliance with Imper­a­tor Furiosa, a fear­some rebel played by Char­l­ize Theron, who emerges as the film’s prize asset. Indeed, the strong female cast, which includes the likes of Rosie Hunt­ing­ton-White­ley and Zoe Kravitz, is a major if unex­pect­ed sell­ing point. Much has been made of Hardy’s suit­abil­i­ty to the lead role (he’s great by the way), but few could have pre­dict­ed that Miller would be bold enough to force his icon­ic hero to take a back­seat in favour of a refresh­ing fran­chise – not to men­tion indus­try – sub­vert­ing fem­i­nist subtext.

There is some­thing reas­sur­ing­ly unfa­mil­iar at work here. The post-apoc­a­lyp­tic Out­back set­ting (Fury Road was shot in Namib­ia) which Miller first had a hand in cul­ti­vat­ing way back in 1979 remains unchanged, but the vet­er­an writer/​director some­how man­ages to make the envi­ron­ment of the film feel entire­ly fresh. Even more impres­sive­ly, we nev­er lose sight of the hero’s jour­ney amid the mael­strom of sharp hand-brake turns and sus­pen­sion-bust­ing stunt work that dom­i­nates Fury Road’s two-hour run­time. This is a film fuelled by fire and blood, and as such you might expect such explo­sive in-cam­era pyrotech­nics to detract from the cen­tral nar­ra­tive, but Miller ensures that we remain invest­ed in Max and Furiosa’s joint arc right to the end.

Ever since Christo­pher Nolan rewrote the block­buster hand­book with his Dark Knight tril­o­gy, sum­mer tent­pole movies have tend­ed to be over­ly earnest, joy­less expe­ri­ences. Not so Fury Road. There is sim­ply so much to admire here on a tech­ni­cal lev­el, from the tire-screech­ing, heavy met­al gui­tar-shred­ding chaos of the action set pieces to Junkie XL’s thun­der­ing drum score to John Seale’s punchy cin­e­matog­ra­phy. These indi­vid­ual com­po­nents may be informed by con­tem­po­rary trends and tech­niques to some degree, but there is some­thing excit­ing­ly orig­i­nal – mav­er­ick, even – about the way Miller fits them all togeth­er. Fury Road works, then, not because it suc­ceeds in rein­vent­ing the wider land­scape with­in which it sits, but because it is con­tent sim­ply to build on its own rich, bonkers legacy.