George Miller is a mastermind

Rating: 10/10 (24 May 2015)

Last night's viewing of the latest Mad Max installment has left me and the entire cinema in awe. I was never a huge fan of the Mad Max movies so when I heard about another installment I was not too thrilled but I decided to give it a shot. The first impressions and reviews that I heard from Cannes got my hopes up, and the IMDb reviews got them even higher. From the opening sequence I new that something wild and crazy was at hand.
1) The story. Unlike the last three movies, this one has a story that actually makes sense and has a beginning and an end. It is not something spectacular or groundbreaking as Inception or Interstellar but it functions perfectly. Simple and understandable without any difficult explanations or twists, ending with a sequence that can only be explained as an adrenaline injection into the spine.
2) The acting. Since the movies stars are Hardy and Theron much was expected. I believe that Hardy was the best possible choice for Max and he did a good job. The cold, crazy, mad performance he gave made me feel like I was watching a wild animal in a cage trying to escape. This perfectly intervenes with the script and the dynamic of the movie. His madness and barely controllable rage follows the story so perfectly it is hard to believe that any take was made during filming. Fluent and uninterrupted, without a single break of character Hardy is Mad Max. But, even though it takes a whole lot of heart to say this, Therone gave the best performance in the movie. Her acting is something so perfect and flawless it is hard to believe she has only one Oscar. Her character and her portrayal was extremely vivid and lifelike. She was the only character that I believed was a real life person and not a comic-book-style-version of a real life person in an post- apocalyptic world. Combined, Hardy and Theron took the movie to a whole new level, a level the previous versions never even came close to.
3) The atmosphere. By far the best element of the movie. The post-apocalyptic feel was present from the first sequence to the last. One could almost feel, taste and smell the dirty and disease infested wasteland of a world the story takes place in. The colors and combinations of colors present in the movie gave it an even more relevant feel. The drastic change of color picturing night and day was as beautiful as terrifying. But the thing that makes this mad movie even crazier is the paste. Perfect timing, perfect duration of the sequences, the editing was the best I have seen in an action movie in the last 20 years.
All in all, this visual masterpiece is George Millers triumph and best movie by far. It is brutal, ugly, dirty, it holds no connection to reality whatsoever, and that is exactly why it is so brilliant. It is a movie that must be seen over and over again. At this point Mad Max Fury road is the best movie of the year, the best Mad Max movie, and one of the best, if not the best action movie in the last decade!