Brilliant Orgy of Chaos & Destruction

Rating: 9/10 (16 May 2015)

More than 30 years passed since George Miller created the iconic postapocalyptic-road carnage crazy Mad Max universe. I was in doubt if he could do his magic with Fury Road – but, boy, he did.
Fury Road is an unrelenting action fest from beginning to end. I cannot remember any recent action movie that made me watch in awe, unbelieving what I saw. The amount of practical stunts, the production design, the camera-work, the scope of this whole thing is beyond anything we got used to in modern blockbuster action movies. In short, this is 100 percent George Millerness and just forget everything about the Babe/Happy Feet flicks.
Tom Hardy takes the baton from Mel Gibson as Max and he gets the job well done. Talking with an odd dialect, haunted by visions of the past, muttering to himself and barking half-beast-like to others in his few lines of dialogue we get the impression that something cracked in his mind beyond repair. However, Max is a survivalist machine with a spark of humanity left and, like in the old movies, gets plunged right into the s*** when things get messy.
Max teams up with Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), the most kickass female movie character since Ellen Ripley. A weird prosthetic arm, mascara obviously made of oil, oh, Charlizewill you marry me? Theron easily steals this movie by giving us a thin-lipped but still emotional image of Furiosa which may be her best performance of her career so far.
The antagonist is scary Immortan Joe aptly played by Hugh Keays-Byrne (yes, the Toecutter) who wants towhatever. Undeniably, the whole plot is paper-thin but, hey, this is a Mad Max movie, not an elaborate and sophisticated shakespearian drama, right?
Hardy and Theron are labelled as starring but the real star of Fury Road is George Miller. It is appalling how much effort, passion and audacity Mr. Miller packed into this film. When I heard that the concept of Fury Road was a 2-hour chase I was afraid that the movie turned out to be a boom-bang action flick which gets boring after one hour. The opposite is true. There are plenty action sequences but Miller gives us few, but powerful oases of calm scenes to flesh out the characters – and give us a moment to catch breath before the cinematic onslaught continues.
And an onslaught it is. Crazy vehicles, skulls, madmen on spikes, a motorized stage with a guitarist as battle-enforcer (with a flamethrower-guitar!), blades, guns, souped-up cars, exploding spears, you name it. It has to be seen to be believed. George Miller has the grandeur of an old veteran knight stepping into the throne room and slapping the gauntlet into all the upstarts' faces who think they are so high and mighty (Michael Bay, anyone?) Honestly, Fury Road blasts so much CGI-action boredom to pieces that even Avengers: Age of Ultron looks cheap and lazy.
The movie is almost perfect but there are some drawbacks. It is kind of awkward that Fury Road is more of a buddy movie (Max/Furiosa). In the old movies (albeit the first one) Max was the man who made the difference and helped the desperate ones to turn the tide. Today he seems to have lost his almost saviour antics and is just an able and skilled post-apocalypse fighter. Secondly, there is the supporting female cast which has very little to do except to motivate Immortan Joe's chase and look hot. They are culprit for just being there to be eyecandy for the presumed male audience.
In all honesty: I want George Miller to win the Acadamy Award for best director. Fury Road is MASSIVE and if you have the slightest affection for action movies, go and watch it in the theatre on a big screen or you will regret it for the rest of your life. If there is a deeper revelation in Fury Road, it has to be that a Mad Max movie can work without Mel Gibsonbut not without George Miller.
It was worth the 30-years wait and it is, indeed, a lovely day.