70 year old doctor teaches world how to make action movie. Jaws drop.

Rating: Null/10 (28 May 2015)

George Miller gave up a medical career to direct "Mad Max" in 1979. His directorial debut, the film starred Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky, an Australian police officer haunted by the death of his family. An excuse for car crashes and chase sequences, the film was heavily influenced by the countless American road movies of the era ("Duel", "Two-Lane Blacktop", "The Driver", "Vanishing Point" etc). Thanks to clever editing, kinetic camera work and a cut re-dubbed by American voice actors, it would become one of the most profitable movies of all time.
"Mad Max" is said to take place in a "post-apocalyptic world", but a better term might be "pre-apocalyptic". Miller's heroes have normal jobs, normal family lives, civilisation has yet to fully collapse and oil shortages are only now beginning to warp society. Dystopia's on the horizon, but not yet here.
By the time we arrive at "The Road Warrior", Miller's 1981 sequel, our world has fully descended into anarchy. Feral gangs abound, nuclear war has killed millions and survivors have sequestered themselves in make-shift fortresses. Meanwhile, the madness that caused this calamity – a global economic network reliant upon incessant oil – has led to an almost religious obsession with petroleum. In "Road Warrior", oil is life. Oil is survival. And everyone's desperate to get their share.
"Warrior", like George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead", which similarly expanded upon a low-budget debut, made an overnight superstar of Miller. Essentially a giant chase movie, the film delivered audacious stunts and jaw-dropping choreography. But more interesting was the comic-book world Miller created, with its grime smeared denizens, warrior kings, bizarre names (Lord Humungus!) and imaginative decor. We'd seen post-apocalyptic worlds before, but nothing quite like this. "Road Warrior" was edgy, but also camp, homo-erotic, and aware of its silliness. The film mocked the very machismo which fuelled its apocalypse, even as it bathed in testosterone.
Next came "Beyond Thunderdome" (1985), the franchise's third instalment. It found mankind having fallen further, society drenched in nuclear radiation and sprouting tumours. The character of Max had himself devolved into an archetypal loner, rarely speaking, always brooding. As it was only co-directed by Miller, "Thunderdome" suffers in comparison to its siblings. It's the most watered-down, most conventionally shot picture in the franchise. And whilst the first two instalments embraced their exploitation/B-movie roots, "Thunderdome" reeked of Hollywood.
"Thunderdome" was a lousy way to end a franchise. Released in 2015, "Fury Road" resurrects and reinvigorates Miller's franchise like Lazarus on steroids. Directed by Miller himself, now a 70 year old grandpa, the film opens with Max (Tom Hardy) being captured by the War Boys, the henchmen of a warlord known as Immortan Joe. Max is then dragged to The Citadel, a giant fortress in which Joe lords over thousands of inhabitants. Early sequences, brisk but brilliant, sketch the workings of this society, with its class hierarchies, its exploitation of men and women, its milk pumps, its food/water shortages, its battles with cancer and blood poisoning, its militancy, its psychotic obsession with oil, honour and warfare and its quasi-religious devotion to all things Immortan Joe.
While Max attempts to escape Joe's prisons, another character plots a similar escape. She's Imperator Furiosa (the immaculately chiselled Charlize Theron), a one-armed woman who attempts to flee The Citadel in the War Rig, an 18-wheeled oil tanker. With Furiosa are sex slaves who are tired of being treated as baby factories. Joe wants his slaves back and so gives chase. What follows is essentially another giant chase movie.
In terms of conceptual design, nothing in "Fury Road" has quite been done before. The film's vehicles bristle with gun turrets, armoured plating and hidden compartments. Some resemble hedgehogs, others are outfitted with bungee chords, poles, ramps, harpoons, spikes, and manic, morale-boosting drummers, sub-woofers and guitarists. Most of these vehicles are crewed by the War Boys, brainwashed footsoldiers who foam at the mouth and spew ecstatic war cries. When the Boys aren't using exploding spears to slay cars like wild buffalo, they're worshipping chrome and dreaming of Valhalla.
"Fury's" first act ends with Furiosa and Max joining forces to evade Joe. Riding The War Rig hard, they head deeper into Australia's churning deserts. Joe gives chase with a mighty convoy of vehicles. Throughout these sequences, Max largely plays second fiddle to Furiosa, a woman hell-bent on survival. Max is just along for her ride. For now.
"Fury's" final third begins with Max convincing Furiosa that Home exists not out in the desert, but back at The Citadel. One's responsibility, Max implies, is not to run and restart, but to reclaim and repair. Unlike recent eco-thrillers ("Interstellar", "Colony", "Pandorum", "Snowpiercer" etc), "Road Fury" thus espouses revolution, not relocation. And so with plant seeds and suggestively named feminists (The Vuvalinis) in tow, Max and Furiosa head back to The Citadel. Much patriarchy-crushing carnage ensues. Fittingly, it's only now that Max begins to blossom into the protective hero we're familiar with.
An instant genre masterpiece, "Fury's" awash with deep reds and cool blues. Sophisticated trash, the film's aesthetic collides 1980s kitsch with 1970s comic-books and grindhouse. Its script - minimalist, yet rich in detail – only occasionally missteps. Miller's third act is far too frenetic, for example, his "revolution" wholly clichéd (see instead "Land of the Dead") and he unwisely rushes through his film's beautiful moments of downtime, like sequences in which Furiosa does running repairs on the War Rig, or gazes wistfully up at night skies. Intelligently shot, composed and choreographed, "Fury Road's" almost too classy for action movie fans, who are likely to miss the film's finer points, or dismiss Miller's formal control and madcap idiosyncrasies. Though a better actor, a miscast Tom Hardy lacks Mel Gibson's mad aura. Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult are excellent, at times even soulful.
8.5/10 – See "Lorenzo's Oil" and "Judge Roy Bean" (1972).