Not as bad as it might have been

Rating: 6/10 (26 January 2016)

Modern remakes of thirty-year-old movies are often disappointing, for many reasons. One of those reasons, I'm sure, is that our expectations are higher -- we want a movie that is not just as good as the original, but better by thirty-years' worth of improvement in the art and science of cinematography.
In this respect, at least Fury Road confounds expectations: it is better in almost every way than the originals; there's no question that it's thirty years ahead, at least in the technological aspects of film-making. Problem is -- the originals weren't all that wonderful themselves. No, really, they weren't. To be fair, Mel Gibson did a decent job, given the constraints of the writing, and managed to make his character at least slightly believable -- something that can't be said for Tom Hardy, but that's probably not his fault, given what he had to work with.
Aside from Mr Gibson, however, the original Max films were pretty so-so: not the worst movies I ever wasted my youth on, but not all that memorable, either. So it shouldn't be all that hard for a modern, big-budget movie to improve on them; and mostly it does.
Realizing that the original Max movies didn't have much of a plot to start with, Fury Road seems to have decided not to bother with one at all. What we get instead is a riot of fast-paced, brutal violence in what seems to be a computer-enhanced version of the Australian bush. The cinematography is utterly captivating -- it's impossible to look away, as one all-too-convincing act of gratuitous violence follows another.
There are some interesting, peculiar touches however, that suggest that this is a bit more than the usual big-budget, macho bullshit fandango. First, there's a measure of symbolism. The white-faced, stunted characters that operate the tyrant's machinery are strikingly similar to the subterranean workers in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis." Lang's workers depict the drudgery and soullessness that modern industrial society imposes on ordinary men and women; Fury Road's mutants -- or whatever they are -- could be seen as playing a similar role. Like Lang's workers, they are utterly disposable, nothing more than a sacrifice to the great machine Moloch. In the characters' search for the lost 'Green Place,' the film hints at our quest for a utopia that we know can never be achieved.
Second, the female heroine (or anti-heroine) Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron, has a physical disability. This is shockingly rare in a mainstream movie, even set in an environment where such things might be expected to be commonplace.
Third, the attention to detail is incredible. It's so good, in fact, that you don't notice it. There are (so far as I can tell) none of the distracting continuity errors that plague most blockbuster movies that are made for audiences with a five-second attention span. If a character gets a bruise in one scene, it's still there in the next one. Props don't just appear out of nowhere. This may seem a small point, but in a cinema industry that is increasingly complacent and contemptuous of the audience, it isn't.
If fact, given what it is, it's a great movie. Unfortunately, what it is, doesn't amount to all that much. Relentless fighting with no underlying human interest gets old very quickly. I wouldn't have minded if the movie had been an hour shorter -- everything it has to say, could be said in an hour.