Mad Max: Fury Road

The last time the Australian director George Miller made a movie with actual human beings, the year was 1998, and even that film, "Babe: Pig in the City", had a pig as its main character. He followed up that one with the two animated "Happy Feet" movies. What do you think possessed Miller to return to human kind, or rather the slow demise of human kind in "Mad Max: Fury Road"? That's anyone's guess. I would assume that after the three previous Mad Max movies, the most recent of which was released 30 years ago ("Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome"), Miller had a little pent up anger. He already conquered the animal world and the animated world, now he wanted to take on the modern action film.

At the beginning we are mainly told nothing, dropped off in the middle of the story, expected to understand who is who and what is going on. The majority of the action in the picture is a single chase sequence, so you catch on to the action quick. We are on a heavily armed and spiked War Rig driven by Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). She is our hero, a tanned Amazon, primitive and striking. Mad Max (Tom Hardy) may be our guide, but she is our savior. Furiosa is escaping Immortan Joe, the tyrannical leader whose white-caked War Boys kidnapped Max to use as a human blood bag. She is attempting to rescue and change the fate of five young women, stowaways beneath the War Rig, meant for breeding and not much else. She wants to bring them to the 'green place' where she was born. The dialogue is minimal and spare, characters rarely speak other than exposition. This movie is for the eyes, not the ears. Miller hates to explain, he lets the images tell the story. When Max inadvertently joins them on their quest, the film kicks into overdrive, and never loses gas. The quasi-feminist leaning of the film is refreshing and Theron, with one arm, and smeared grease over her forehead is probably the closest thing we'll get to a real action hero this year. Apologies to the Avengers.

Tom Hardy in the fourth installment of George Miller's "Mad Max" franchise

This is a continuation of and not a reboot of the original Mad Max movies, and Miller does this on purpose. Replacing Mel Gibson wasn't hard. Hardy does just fine, he even has some of the young Gibson's smarmy charm. I have only seen the first Mad Max, from 1979, which was vicious and had an frenetic energy in each scene but it didn't have nearly the venom this film spits out. Miller has been building to this. The original is surprisingly tame when viewed today, but 40 odd years ago it was shocking with its realist violence. But in "Mad Mad: Fury Road" everything is amped up to another level, more blood, more extras, more weather, more color, and reality falls to the wayside. 

Each action set piece makes kinetic sense, and the action moves along the story instead of only punching it up. We understand the characters better through the action. Watching Furiosa drive the War Rig, her eyes never leaving the endless road, tells us just what need to know about her. Her focus, determination, and sheer ferocity come through. Much of the credit must go to Theron, whose presence overwhelms you, her eyes holding a world of guilt and deprivation. Then there is of course, Max, with a cage blocking his face for most of the film, teeth gritting, sprouting out from in front of, on top of, and below any number of cars. Max speaks maybe a paragraph of dialogue throughout the duration of the film. Hardy is an impressive actor, with the best mouth in movies today. I am not the first to say what a travesty that this is the second time in recent memory (the first in "The Dark Knight Rises") he had something covering that mug of his. Regardless of the cage face he proves to be a sturdy entry point into the world Miller created. 

Chaos is not an easy thing to explain, let alone film. How many times during any number of super hero films did you actually understand the physical and emotional stakes of any given action scene?Miller manages to create a world filled to the brim with chaotic and disturbing images that have a gruesome sense of poetry. The scenes of the Citadel, where Immortan Joe reigns, with rows of obese women breastfeeding, close ups of warts on emaciated bodies, the tiny disfigured mini Immortan Joe cackling in the background will stay with me a very long time. The colors scream out at you. The desert is an over saturated rusted orange red, the sky an ombre'd cobalt blue. Two colors fighting against each other. You are brought into this world in a startling and quick way and are left just the same. The movie's relentlessly propulsive energy never lets up, you can't wait for what's next. Too many action films today rely on our previous knowledge of the characters, familiar back story tropes and retrograde gender dynamics. These films don't bring anything new to the conversation about movies or the action genre in general. But "Mad Max: Fury Road" does, and it is the best kind of summer entertainment: something fun, something fresh, something dangerous.