Nothing More Than A Noisy Blockbuster

Rating: 6/10 (6 June 2015)

I love post apocalyptic fiction . John Wyndham and John Christopher are amongst my favourite authors . They weave compelling stories of average everymen surround by a hostile landscape where it's every man for himself and only the cruelest and most heartless survive . George Miller's MAD MAX films are an extention of this . Low brow cinematic spectacle but fair as entertainment goes . And let's not forget hugely influential as well . Sadly the films' influence found itself being transplanted in nearly every post apocalypse story for the next 20 years where a brooding loner , a man of few words , drives through a desert landscape doing his best to survive in a hostile world against scavengers . Influntial but rather unimaginative and the movies probably did the sub-genre more harm than good . This reboot did capture my imagination via the trailers and so decided to give the film a chance , not least because as soon as it was released it shot to number 25 on the IMDb Top 250
If nothing else the film gets off with a bang with the eponymous Max filling us in via voice over that the world has destroyed itself and man has to fight to stay alive against his fellow man and just to prove this is more difficult than it sounds we're treated to a high octane chase sequence replete with fast camera action and editing . Have I mentioned the opening title credits haven't appeared yet ? This sets up the rest of the film that continues in mainly the same way
In short if you liked MAD MAX 2 you're going to love this one because this is MAD MAX 2 on a fatal cocaine overdose which is a great thing or a disappointing thing depending on how you look on it . Sadly I'm in the second camp because I wanted more meat on the story and there's not much narrative here . Max gets used as a gimp on the front of a vehicle , manages to escape during an epic stunt sequence , teams up with some fair nymphet maidens and protects them from the baddies and that's it as far as plot goes . The first half of the film is basically one elongated noisy chase sequence full of stunts , car crashes , pyrotechnics . I's brash , noisy and spectacular , so much so that I actually felt myself getting rather bored by all this noise and bluster . Eventually the film does settle down a bit and has characters talking in normal tones without the explosions in the background but the dialogue is just basic as are the performances , Certainly MAD MAX FURY ROAD will be up for a few Oscar noms next year but only for the technical aspects and I'm slightly surprised my IMDb peers rate it so highly