Max Is Back with Max Action

Rating: 9/10 (26 May 2015)

Moviegoers old enough to remember the 1980s may cherish memories of those gonzo, post-apocalyptic, B-movies where humans struggled to survive in either an urban or desert wasteland against gloomy odds. Those low-budget, R-rated, schlock sagas with gladiatorial looking psychotic freaks careening around in beatnik-style buggies straight out of an auto graveyard were both 'drive-in' movie and VHS favorites. These lowbrow actioneers were definitely an acquired taste. Exploitation classics like "1990: The Bronx Warriors," "Warriors of the Wasteland," "2019 - After the Fall of New York," "Exterminators Of The Year 3000," and "Warrior of the Lost World" proliferated during the 80s after "Max Mad" surprised Hollywood and generated a market for this violent, slam-bang, dystopian nihilism. According to DVD Times, "'Mad Max' was shot on a budget of 400,000 Australian Dollars, which is a tiny budget for such an action packed film. Up until 'Blair Witch' it held the record for greatest profit to budget ratio (It grossed $100 million USD eventually)." Not only did director George Miller make a superstar out of Mel Gibson with "Mad Max" (1979), but he also ushered in the grungy, low-class, genre that eventually inspired big-budget replicas. Does anybody remember Kevin Costner's "Waterworld?" The studio that produced "Waterworld" sought to remake "Mad Max," but they wanted to stage it on the high seas. Thirty years after he wrapped the third entry in the "Mad Max" trilogy with "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" (1985), George Miller has revived the post-nuke warrior in "Mad Max: Fury Road" with Tom Hardy taking over Mel Gibson's role. About four years ago, Paul Miller—a Michigan native no relation to George—helmed a fan film "Mad Max Renegade" that filled in the gap between the first "Mad Max" and "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior." If you aren't a 1980s movie aficionado, you may have trouble appreciating "Mad Max: Fury Road" with Charlize Theron taking star billing over Tom Hardy.
When we first see Max (Tom Hardy of "The Dark Knight Rises"), he is standing with his back to the camera on a craggy zenith overlooking a parched desert. In voice over narration, he explains that he used to be a policeman. Furthermore, he reveals that his past still haunts him as much as his doubtful future troubles him. An agile two-headed lizard makes the mistake of scuttling too close, and Max gobbles it down. No sooner has he climbed back into his car and driven off than a phalanx of cars pursues him with a vengeance. Max crashes his car, and his dastardly captors take him to an unspecified place in the desert where a collection of buttes towers over the rugged terrain. This place is known as 'the Citadel.' My chief complaint about this spectacular looking, souped-up, action thriller is the lack of information not only about our resourceful hero but also the people and places in it. The lunatic mutants who shanghai Max are called 'Warboys.' These bare-chested brigands cavort about in trousers and boots and have painted torsos flour-white from the waist up. Clean-shaven skulls complete their ghoulish appearance. They worship a sadistic tyrannical , Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne of the original "Mad Max"), who decks himself out in a plastic outfit with what appear to be oxygen hoses sprouting from a grotesque face mask with a billows on his shoulders. Miller never divulges why Joe relies on such a macabre apparatus. Joe rules from one of the buttes and controls the water supply. "Do not become addicted to water," he warns, "it will take hold of you and you will resent its absence." Meantime, he maintains a harem of young, curvaceous, Victoria's Secret models with which he procreates while another harem of corpulent cuties yield buckets of breast milk from pumping units in Citadel. Indeed, "Mad Max Fury Road" is not your conventional, run-of-the-mill, road trip. Joe has constructed an elaborate system of elevators as well as massive tanker trucks that he dispatches to fetch fuel. He has assigned a driver, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron of "Monster"), to cruise into the wastelands with an escort of Warboys to replenish their gasoline supply. At the last minute, Furiosa goes rogue and swerves her vehicle off-course into the desert. Initially, her heavily-armed escort believes she is complying with new orders. An alarmed Joe assembles an armada of bizarre vehicles to pursue Furiosa. One of Joe's Warboys, Nux (Nicholas Hoult of "X-Men: Days of Future Past"), desperately wants to commandeer a pursuit vehicle, but he has to take his 'blood bag' with him. Since his capture, Max has suffered with Warboys tattooing his back and suspending him upside down to furnish blood to Nux. During the feverish pursuit of Furiosa, Max manages to escape Nux and negotiates an uneasy truce with our heroine. Max learns Furiosa is searching for her utopian homeland, and a quintet of Joe's wives have chosen to defect and accompany her. One of the harem is poised to give birth, and Joe is incandescent with rage when she shields these treacherous fugitives.
Basically, "Mad Max: Fury Road" amounts to an adrenaline-laced, testosterone-laden, high-octane fantasy boasting outlandish hybrid vehicles and amazing motorcycle aerobatics. The narrative unfolds in an anonymous desert in the distant future. At one point, a gargantuan dust storm teeming with twisters engulfs everybody. Max sits out the early part of the movie as a prisoner in the Citadel. Hardy wears a face mask a little more revealing than the one he sported as the maleficent Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises." Hardy proves every bit as resilient as Mel Gibson's Max, and he is constantly running a gauntlet. Surprisingly, Charlize Theron steals the show. Although minus part of her left forearm, she brandishes a creepy mechanical contraption that enables her to steer her big rig. Despite its scarcity of exposition, "Mad Max: Fury Road" qualifies as an entertaining, often surreal, but ultimately fast-paced demolition derby.