A movie about details: Mad Max Fury Road

Rating: 9/10 (9 June 2015)

The devil is in the details.
Mad Max is one of the first movie franchises to have shown audiences gritty and original post-apocalyptic scenarios that have now become cult classics. Since the first installment in the franchise 'Mad Max' in 1979 made with a small budget of 400 000$, many movies and games have been inspired by George Miller's vision such as Escape From New York (1981), the Fallout game franchise.
The new movie had to face a lot of scepticism before its release. Many pointed out that it would do what most action/sci-fi reboots do, that is to come up with a mess of blend CGI playstation action, have poor character development and a stereotypical storyline. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) does not tackle all these issues entirely, but at least proves that it is still possible to witness original and meaningful big-budget movies for R-rated audiences.
How does it do it? By caring about the details. George Miller grants us the thrill to have practical effects instead of CGI in almost all the action scenes, he is not afraid to leave the audience ''out-of-ease'' by not having the characters explain or showing what is currently going, rather by giving us the chance to try and piece it together. The movie is stylish, but that is not the main focus. The action scenes are gigantic, but everyone is expendable as the protagonists are not invincible stereotyped superheros. There is also no doubt that Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron were great casting choices, as their cold-minded characters have very few flaws of performance.
There would be only reason why this film would not be remembered as great, if it was all about the explosions, action and sex. There is indeed a message underneath the madness and it can interpreted as a fear of what's to come. Post-apocalyptic movies warn about the dangerous survival nature of man and about how tyrants would yield all the power and use what's left of man for their benefit. This movie depicts this as the villain and his source of power over the masses: water. Fury Road does give us enough to think about, enough so it doesn't feel like a waste of thrills.
The only hick, there is too much in one movie to be only 2 hours long.
4.5/5