Thank you, George Miller for Fury Road and thank you in advance, for the next installments

Rating: 9/10 (28 May 2015)

The Road Warrior on steroids...at 70, George Miller's still got it. This put F&F to shame when the majority of the automotive action is real, and I'm still not quite sure after seeing FR in 3D, how Tom Hardy did not get seriously injured with some of the stuff he did. All the action was searing and you can see cinematographer John Seale's fingerprint on everything...Miller and Seale can truly shoot a real, REAL action scene and put the camera in places it probably shouldn't be able to go. One highlight for me was the uber-dramatic, phenomenally scored sandstorm scene with its flawless CGI integration...the CGI is there but the seam is invisible. This scene literally had me eyebrows raised and saying, "These storyboards must've been fun to plan out" The integration of the FX and the live-action footage is truly at expert level. (Sorry, Marvel...but you can always see the CGI in your movies and we always know where it starts and ends) I simply cant say enough good things about MM:FR, but I'll try...Tom Hardy apparently signed on for 2 more MM installments under Miller. I can't imagine what Miller has planned for us next but with George Miller, we should be ready for anything. One thing that really sticks out for me is that for the viewing my wife and I went to last night was rather small, our auditorium was only half-filled but after the last shot finished and Directed by George Miller appeared, everybody at our showing clapped for a whole minute...that didn't happen at either Avengers or F7. This movie has changed the action genre again, but this time, to a place where movies have never gone...directors not wanting to shoot scenes the easy way, but the best way. Most directors will incorporate the digital work for a whole list of reasons...George Miller takes that list, burns it with a lighter and blows the ashes away with a leaf blower. He doesn't use CGI to make it easy, he uses it to turn the already jaw-dropping into the absolutely eye-popping. Using CGI so perfectly and so minimally, you don't know where it is or how much there is. You watch any superhero movie or F&F movie and you can see where the digital work is...here, don't even bother looking. And that's where George Miller takes us, to a place where we know it's there for about 2 seconds, but we don't know where it started and finished and we don't care at all. As good as F7 and Avengers were, there was a lot of areas they could've been better...George Miller not only goes to that place but now he owns it and he doesn't have to give it back.
With the technical aspect locked up in the hands of Miller, Seale and crew, the real reason to watch this is the magnetic chemistry of Hardy and Theron...a masterfully staged fight between Max, Furiosa and Nux quickly transforms into a reluctant partnership against Immortan Joe and his regime and they quickly adapt to whatever the situation brings, especially when Furiosa gets stabbed at the worst possible moment. Their commitment is never to each other but to surviving and they both acknowledge that they are only resources to help that cause. Max doesn't even tell her his name until she's almost dead...because at no point does knowing his name help them on their journey, that is until knowing him as a person, more or less, as well as his blood, helps her to survive her injury. A small detail but pivotal to their relationship as it wasn't important until it became important. And enough can't be said about Theron as Furiosa...she is this generation's Ripley, a survivor who isn't afraid or too proud to take help when she needs it, and, above all, will see her cause through to the end. Theron truly owns the role when she agrees with Max to head back to their compound...she already offered to cement their partnership, he goes one better and offers to go back to the Citadel with them AND help them retake it because now, surviving isn't enough for either of them...they both seek redemption and they know they need each other to accomplish that. Theron owns that scene going from completely defeated, then willing to take the second path, and finally agreeing with Max's suggestion because it still offers hope and she completes the 360 perfectly because she knows that Furiosa has to complete her journey. Hardy and Theron are the best on-screen pair I've seen in more than a decade and I really hope that Miller has more for them to do together. This movie should've been an epic fail on so many levels...yet George Miller looks at the odds, laughs at them, pushes them out of his way and blows them up in the first 15 minutes. Or maybe that was Max's car...