A vision of (almost) pure insanity

Rating: 9/10 (17 May 2015)

Mad Max: Fury Road is true cinema. It does not, like the inescapable mass of dull summer movies, rely on a makeshift script and thoroughly uninteresting characters to sell tickets to a largely indifferent audience looking for two hours of bland entertainment for no reason other than to pass the time. Rather, Mad Max: Fury Road breaks well and solidly free of common summer movies. It is not only riveting, it is deliciously shot and well-directed, an art movie and blockbuster rolled beautifully into one.
The film stars Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky, a solitary man trying to survive in a harsh desert wasteland, haunted by visions of his past. Tom Hardy instills a certain desperation within his character, almost making him seem like an animal, void of intellect and feeling. "A man reduced to one instinct – survival". Tom Hardy plays the role very well, but he sometimes comes across as good ol' Bane in his mannerisms, a man of few words and a whole lot of muscle.
Now, while Tom Hardy kills his role, Charlize Theron butchers hers. She plays Imperator Furiosa, a one-armed woman who teams up with Max to escape the warlord Immortan Joe's Citadel, armed with a massive "War Rig" and a group of young women referred to as Immortan Joe's "breeders". This role is easily the best role Charlize Theron has ever taken on. Her cold, piercing stare is as unsettling as the insanity raging around her. She is not, like summer movies nowadays would have us believe, a woman who simply exists to remove her clothing for the pleasure of a man. She comes across as a pinnacle of morality, strength, and power, better than anyone else on the screen could come even remotely close. Screw off, men's rights activists. I'm a man, and I can see that this is not feminist propaganda. This is just an unprecedentedly spectacular performance from Charlize Theron that does not involve her being a sexual object. Men's rights activistswow.
Of course, however, this film was not made to showcase Charlize Theron. This film was meant to convey pure and terrifyingly logical insanity that races purposely through your mind like a centipede, scorching your eyes and smashing your brains out, augmenting your own little crevices of insanity hidden deep within you until you are gasping under the strain of it. I, for one, occasionally wanted to stand up on my chair and scream. I was never sure why.
The chase scenes (which encompass almost the whole movie) are beautiful. It seems as if each shot was meticulously chosen in order to send a rush of adrenaline pulsing through the audience. Each explosion. Each maniacal yell and flying body. Each gunshot. Each and every flipping car. And a final, explosive flying 3D guitar. Each element of this film makes the audience understand that they are in the hands of a master director that has been crafting this wonderfully intense story for thirty years. This film should be the standard for summer movies.
Notice that I said that this film should be the standard for summer movies. I don't believe that it exceeded it to the point where it should be immortalized in the canon of incredible action movies. The final battle scene, while being as visually commanding as the other ones, was not as epic as I had expected it to be considering all the buildup that it had leading up to it. It felt much like the other scenes, invoking a sort of déjà vu that greatly reduced its effect. I was expecting a Matrix subway fight. Instead, I got the lobby scene for the second time. Now, that is not to say that this film is in any way bad. This film is very good, just not the excellent film that it had every right to be.
George Miller scorns Hollywood's money-grubbing emptiness with this film. You can almost hear his voice amid the chaos and violence saying, "Seriously, is that all you can do?"
Rating: 9/10