Overrated Mediocrity. What a Disappointment.

Rating: 3/10 (16 May 2015)

What a shame!!! That's all i could say as I left the cinema Thursday night, after attending the first showing. Before i start my review for this film, I'd like to share my thoughts on the first three as they were an integral part of my childhood and hold some nostalgic reverence for me as an adult. Mad Max is a film i don't particularly care for as I find it a bit too downbeat and low budget for my taste. It's also visually different from the other three films as it takes place in a vast country wasteland, where as the others take place in dessert locals that give off a more grand scope, that's severely lacking in the first film. The first film also lacks any iconic action scenes or a memorable villain that would become a trademark in the later films. The Road Warrior is a film I enjoy immensely and don't really have much else to add that hasn't already been said by everyone over the last 34 years. Beyond Thunderdome is a film I find disjointed. The one hand all the scenes directed by George Miller are amazing and well done, the thunderdome fight (still one of the greatest in cinema history), and the end chase sequence are exciting and hint at the great film it could have been had he directed the whole movie. The rest of the film however featuring the lost children and anything to do with the people of Bartertown and their politics is just annoying and slow's the movie down to a crawl. The Tina Turner song "We Don't Need Another Hero" however, is classic and one of my favorite songs of all time. So now we come to Fury Road a film I've been looking forward too ever since I saw the first trailer that premiered at Comic Con last summer. The trailer made the film look epic and visually stunning, featuring things we had never seen before on film. Months I waited for it's release and with each day drawing closer and closer, my anticipation grew. Cut to earlier this week as the reviews from many professional film critic outlets came pouring in. They were declaring this film to be a masterpiece and one of the greatest action movies of all time. I couldn't believe what i was hearing and waited with baited breath to see it on Thursday night. Skip to 2 hours and change later and even now as i type this several days later, "WHAT THE HELL IS EVERYBODY RAVING ABOUT!!!!!!". Seriously, I'm as perplexed by all this as other negative reviewers are. This solidifies my thinking that film critics are irrelevant and don't know what they're talking about. Same goes for Rotten Tomatoes a site I won't ever be going on again, they're a joke. Back to the film though, I'm still trying to figure out how something that looked so groundbreaking and revolutionary from the marketing, become so boring and uninvolving as you sit down and watch it in the theater. The answer, the story sucks. Oh wait, I forgot there was no story, just a bunch of chasing and then more chasing, followed by more chasing, before we take a detour in the second act, where our characters literally do nothing but sit around at night, contemplating about the situation they're in and how they intend to get out of it for 30 straight minutes. This section slows the movie down to a Terence Malick sized crawl as we the audience become restless hoping for something to happen soon and happen quick. The cast is also disappointing with Tom Hardy being a poor imitator of Mel Gibson. It's not entirely his fault though as he isn't really the main character. That's right, Max hardly does anything in this movie. Yes, he beats some people up and gets involved in some of the action, however he's merely taking orders from Charlize Theron's character and just seems completely uninterested in everything that goes on around him. Theron is fine in the movie but again is given little to work with. As for the other females, they're not even worth talking about as they barely leave an impression on the audience and are not developed in the slightest. The villain was cool to look at but again underutilized and nonthreatening. The movies looks nice and is fairly well directed by George Miller but has a feeling of a been there done that feel that indicated that George Miller was only interested in creating cool visuals to distract us from his shitty script. Movies need more than pretty pictures to keep us engaged, we need strong characters and story to make us wanna come back and watch a film over and over, which this film fails to do. So in ending this review, I want to say to all the masses out there praising this to the heavens, that you really should ask for more from your movies because if this is what we accept now as good films than cinema is dead my friends. In closing I thought this film was pretty disappointing and now has made me sworn off from seeing anymore Mad Max films in the future. So no I don't recommend this film if u half to see it wait for redbox and watch the first 30 minutes which admittedly are great but be forewarned it all goes downhill after that. Thanks for reading my review.