Mad Max: Fury Road – Review

The Hollywood machine is always looking to cash in on a sure thing.  Usually that means any time a movie does well, the unending sequel machine commences.  A different, and more interesting, option is to dig up popular properties of old and bring them back to life.  This type of prospect piques even more interest when you have the original director back for another go around.  Mad Max: Fury Road was co-written, directed, and produced by George Miller – yes, the same George Miller who directed the original Mad Max films.  The eponymous character is now played by Tom Hardy with Charlize Theron also playing a major role.

While not a sequel or prequel, it doesn’t really seem like a reboot.  There is a hardy guy named Max (see what I did there?).  He lives in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where basic necessities have become rare and violent clashes are a part of life.  That’s really all there is to know about what happens in Fury Road.  He who carries the biggest stick uses it to control and oppress others.  Some, however, are not willing to be oppressed.  Chaos ensues.

That chaos is the whole design and intent of the film.  It is also strikingly different from whatever you might be thinking of as chaos.  Actually, a better term to use would be mayhem.  Mad Max: Fury Road is absolute mayhem.  The car chases, car battles, firefights, and melee weapon fights are all mixed into one giant bowl of mayhem.  People swing through the air attached to ingeniously created contraptions designed purely for maximum offensive effect without care for the safety of the attacker.

Some faults are definitely present and there are some pretty major decisions that should have been changed.  If the whole focus of the film is the mayhem without much regard to dialogue or character development . . . the keep that the focus.  While others might disagree, I think the film would have benefited from more dialogue and character development.  If Tom Hardy really is attached to 3 more Mad Max films, you can’t just rely on the same mayhem theme over and over.  Yes, that is the soup de jour, but there is going to need to be something to differentiate all these different movies.

With that being said, the good thing about Mad Max: Fury Road is that none of these thoughts come up until long after you’ve finished watching it because while you’re watching it your eyes will simply be glued to the screen because your soul will be captivated by the absolute mayhem.