If you haven’t seen the 1978 first installment of the film series, where old Max (Mel Gibson) zeroes out a motorcycle gang due to the murder of his family, it won’t be easy to identify with this new Max (Tom Hardy). This new Mad Max is mostly just some random dude, whom Immortan Joe’s somewhat anemic-looking subordinates drag out of his car and reclassify as a pedestrian in the first few minutes of the film. Might as well call him Jimmy the Pisser. Okay, the new Max is still a tad more than your average Jimmy constantly wetting himself, having developed parkour and acrobatic skills in the INFINITE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK, which come in handy as he’s forced to jump around on various speeding vehicles for the remainder of the film.
And this new Mad Max falls short of the old Max (and Jimmy) in that he’s a jerk.
After realizing they’re in the same (motor)boat with Furiosa (Charlize Theron), Immortan Joe’s silently departing, disgruntled employee, and his former girlfriends, instead of giving them a nod and saying, “Hey ladies, what’s up? Let’s be best buddies from now on,” he pulls a gun on them, robs them, and lets them beat him senseless.
Not that Furiosa is much of a thoughtful personality either: after all, she drags Joe’s supermodel-like concubines out of their comfort zone into the ENDLESS AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK – and the foolish geese blindly follow; when all they should be doing is lounging around in the only remaining habitable place amidst the apocalypse, looking stunning, and occasionally delighting the grateful Immortan Joe (the poor man’s Darth Vader) with a new offspring. Joe, okay, really isn’t the most charming gentleman, but still isn’t lacking in charisma; and after all, they could easily end up with someone a hundred times worse after judgment day.
The film’s main merit, the visual world, is okay, and mostly thanks to the former, the film’s atmosphere is as well: Desert, Sunshine, Apocalypse, although Little “M” angrily resented the excessive use of blue filters in the night scenes.
However, the action scenes are very hard to follow, the cuts are too fast, and the camera shakes as if there’s no tomorrow (or yesterday). You might find this especially problematic because the film “Mad Max” consists EXCLUSIVELY of action. If there’s an occasional brief break, it’s used to push you even deeper into boredom with sappy and sensationalist dialogues. And that’s the biggest problem with this film: after about half an hour, the constant action becomes deadly dull, and you can’t wait to finally be done with it.
George Miller couldn’t resist including the biggest cliché of the lonely and tough hero at the end of the film: Max, accompanied by Furiosa’s beseeching gaze, turns his back on his new friends and sets off into the sunset. But you know it’s all just a show, a projection, plain screwing around, because after just 27 minutes of wandering, Max will have to recognize that he’s in the last habitable place in the INFINITE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK, so he’ll have to turn around and walk back to Furiosa, who, after pulling him close, whispers in her ear:
6/10
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) (IMDb)
Director: George Miller, Stars: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron