Valhalla, My War Boys!

Rating: 9/10 (16 May 2015)

I've seen the overstuffed toybox of my childhood pillaged for cinematic "inspiration" so many times now that the prospect rarely offends or entices me. Star Trek, Star Wars, every cruddy horror movie ever to have graced a rented VHS tape. Take it all, you greedy bastards. Melt my cherished memories down for pocket change, see if I care.
After the heartbreaking artistic faceplant that was Ridley Scott's misbegotten Prometheus, I'd pretty much given up on these sorts of refried treats. O, me of little faith! If anyone can tool up a bloody-knuckle, road-raging death machine out of junked parts, it's George 'Mad Max' Miller. Fresh from the theater, I feel like an overstressed carburetor into which some baldhead lunatic just spat a mouthful of pure nitro. The pitiless desert sun is blazing nova bright above, and it's a lovely, lovely day indeed.
I caught Fury Road in 3-D, which was cool...mostly because I now get to go back and see it without the unnecessary dimensional enhancement. And again gaze vacantly into that stupendous vortex of crazy-ass, nonstop, man-machine mayhem like the sweaty, crack-brained adolescent I once was (and of course always will be). I don't know that I've EVER in my screen-staring LIFE seen a vehicular action flick half so relentlessly thrilling. And certainly not this side of The Road Warrior. The bug-splattered, silver-glossed, ear-to-ear grin Miller & Co. smacked across my idiot mug in the film's opening moments is still fixed in place several hours later. Turns out mom was right: my face is stuck this way.
One minor quibble: Fury Road would be improved significantly were some sensible soul simply to take a small red pen to each scripted instance of the words "hope" and "redemption". For a filmmaker whose visual storytelling has received such widespread praise, Miller sure lays on the thematic underlining with a hefty trowel. Some may accept Max and Furiosa's portentous small talk as appropriate to the tale's mythic ambitions. Me, I just found it kind of annoying, with the clunky sentimentalism tipping stoic gravitas into po-faced camp.
But why fret over details? I mean, somebody who worked on this once- in-a-lifetime nightmare monsterpiece gets a screen credit for "Wheels and Skulls". How many other movies can you say that about?