Strapped screaming to the side of a V8 death machine for 120 minutes

Rating: 9/10 (24 June 2015)

I can't quite express how great I think it is that Mad Max: Fury Road almost completely abandons the action film formula that has been ruling the box office for about 15 years.
Fury Road is essentially a two hour chase sequence. There is perhaps two pages of dialogue in the entire thing. At times it seems like an elaborate stage show, a ballet, a piece of performance art, yet all in all it is exactly what it set out to be which is first and foremost an action film.
I get the feeling that the film works so well because George Miller didn't approach it as if he was making a movie. He seems to have approached it almost as some divine overseer creating and examining a world, putting the pieces in place and working out, given the circumstances and the nature of the characters, what anyone would reasonably expect to happen. In such an insane world there's no time for introductions or exposition, everything's at a furious pace. So Miller shows rather than tells and it's surprisingly easy to get your head into this world. So much so that you immediately accept a giant truck with a mutated blind guitar player in a red onesie perched at the front like a hood ornament, firing fire out of the neck of his twisted metal electric axe as he makes it roar and growl, thrashing and bouncing on bungee chords in front of a wall of speakers and loud-hailers as a tribe of furious drummers back him up.
As I understand the film was originally intended to be an animation hence it was storyboarded to death. This means every shot is absolutely beautiful. The special effects are almost entirely practical adding further depth to the fire and sand and twisted metal. 130 cars were built, I believe less than half survived filming.
The plot isn't Earth-shattering. It's not meant to be. Neither Max nor Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa are trying to save the world or even a small part of it. Furiosa initiates the plot by staging a rescue of warlord Immortan Joe's prized breeders which fires him up enough to pursue her with his entire fleet of glorious souped-up death machines crewed by an army of the insane and the damned. That's it. Max finds himself part of it through chance and the protagonists simply respond as best they can in order to survive. There's no grandstanding, no quiet points where characters talk about themselves in an attempt to forge audience engagement, not even so Furiosa could talk about her sweet robot arm or why she felt the need to revolt against Joe, (possibly with a reference to her sweet robot arm.) It doesn't need to have this either. Character motivations are plainly there for all to see due to Miller's approach. There's not even a set up for a final confrontation, no exchange of words between the antagonist and protagonist before they engage in fisticuffs as is usually the case. It happens as the rest of the film does; strapped screaming to the side of a V8 monster truck at 100 kilometres an hour as everyone just tries to stay alive. How are you going to have a conversation about motivations during that?
This would be a beautiful albeit forgettable film if it didn't completely rework or ignore how action films have been built over the last two decades or so, even despite the fantastic characters and acting from Theron in particular. George Miller deserves so much credit for having a vision and just pursuing it. How great it is that he was seemingly unimpeded by studio interests – mostly because I think it was seen as a schlock B-movie attempt to cash in on 70s and 80s nostalgia. How great is it that so many just went along with it. How great is it that audiences and critics are also going along with it, rewarding a brave and exceptional piece of cinematic art with the plaudits it deserves.