Mad Max Fury Road Review
Monday, May 18. 2015Mad Max: Fury Road moves like one of it's own post-apocalyptic vehicles: a few clicks and whirs at first, but as soon as it catches it revs up to redline and stays there until everything is blown up or exhausted. There's really no way to review it without getting into SPOILER territory, so consider yourself warned if you haven't seen it yet.
It starts out with Max and his black-on-black in the middle of the desert, pursued and quickly captured by the War Boys of Immortan Joe. They bring Max back to the Citadel, where Max tries but fails to escape. This section of the movie is an info dump, and while necessary to the overall plot felt a little disjointed. Also, the use of undercranking during the foot chase was a shout out to the old movies, but didn't really do anything here. Once Max was recaptured and we moved on to the introduction of Immortan Joe and Imperator Furiosa, though, things quickly went from the rough start-up to a smooth idle. That idle didn't last long, though, because as soon as Furiosa put the aptly-named War Rig into gear, so did Miller.
From that point on, we're treated to what one of our fellow theater-goers dubbed, "steam punk car porn." Everything from a bare metal '34 Chevy to a drum- and guitar-wielding MAN 8x8 was sent screaming across the desert, blasting noise and flames into the atmosphere. The first chase sequence climaxed in a desert storm of tornadoes, fire, and lightning that filled the whole screen and destroyed countless cars (and baddies).
A brief lull followed - consider it the pause between shifting gears - while our heroes are introduced to each other and the mission. Lulls like this happen a few times over the course of the movie, and while the dialogue is as clunky as some have noted, the non-dialogue communications are brilliant. From a brief show of respect from Max to the former War Boy Nux, to the meeting with Furiosa's former tribe, there are some truly great moments. Even during the more action-packed scenes, there are some fantastic nonverbal moments like Angharad's Crowning Moment of Awesome that seal Fury Road as more than just a smash-'em-up car movie.
Great cars, incredible stunts, and a solid story all come together to provide a movie well worth the praise it has been receiving.
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