Wonderfully over-the-top action

Rating: 8/10 (20 May 2015)

Having never laid my eyes on a Mad Max film before, watching Fury Road was something of a new experience for sure. Looking at the trailer, I got the feeling that beautifully choreographed action and car chases were what I should expect...and that's precisely what I got. It's inherently over-the-top and the attempts at serious storytelling come across as afterthoughts, but the action more than makes up for it.
We're immediately introduced to Mad Max standing on a cliff overlooking an endless wasteland. Through some wonderfully rapid-fire editing we get that he's constantly confronted with flashbacks from his tragic past, a past in which he failed to protect his family. He tells us he's become a man reduced to a single instinct: survive. He's captured by Immortan Joe's forces, who controls the local water supply and therefore controls the local population. When he's strapped onto a car of a group of Joe's forces preparing to raid a neighboring village for gasoline, Imperator Furiosa is one of the drivers. She has plans of her own, however. She's taken Joe's daughters, who were very much willing to go with her mind you, and stuffed them in her truck. She plans to go to her hometown. Before you know it, she and Max have formed an unlikely pair, each seeking redemption in their own way.
Like I said, the story's quite basic and this is something director/writer Miller's fully aware of as well, labeling it simply a 'western on wheels'. Max, having failed to protect his family, now finds an opportunity to protect Furiosa and company and in so doing, find peace of mind. Furiosa seeks peace of mind as well, believing she'll find it in her hometown all the way across the desert. Max and Furiosa's leap from unwilling team to brothers-in-arms is well done, but some of the attempts at drama are a bit overdone. After one plot twist, the music swells as Furiosa drops to her knees and yells at the sky. All that's missing is her defiantly raising her arms aloft à la Platoon and shouting 'Nooo'. I get that complaining about a mad max film being over the top is a bit redundant, but I can't help but admit that these attempts at drama just don't make the impact they're supposed to. However, I did like Max's flashbacks. They were well edited, the imagery coming at you at a hundred miles per hour. They weren't just visually pleasing, but they took little time away from the film's main attraction: action.
Needless to say, action is where Fury Road truly shines. Most of it takes place on the open road. Thankfully, much of it looks--and feels--incredibly realistic, even when guys are using long poles to leap from one car to the next...and that's a tame stunt by Fury Road's standards. The film also injects plenty of well-placed humor into the proceedings as well and I'm not talking about any of those ridiculous 'I didn't sign up for this' comments made by passersby and so on. I'm talking a truck that has countless speakers strapped on to them, including a man rocking out on his electric guitar like there's no tomorrow. I'm talking countless cars crashing into each other and having the aforementioned guitar flying towards the camera in slo- mo; the list goes on.
Even though fans have had to wait roughly three decades for the fourth entry in the franchise, it definitely seems like the wait was worth it. Some of the drama doesn't resonate at all, but with action this entertaining, who even cares?