Bring a seat belt. And leave your brain at the door.

Rating: 8/10 (14 March 2016)

I work in the South African film industry and I'm also an award-winning screenwriter, so I have the insider's perspective on film. It's with an industry professional's perspective that I sat down to see Fury Road.
A lot of my friends worked on this film during most of a year of principle photography in Namibia, on both sides of the camera, and what a hell of a film it has turned out to be. It's a slapdash, rip-roaring, runaway, balls-to-the-wall, anarchic roller-coaster juggernaut that rides roughshod, ruthlessly and deliberately, over pretty much every hallowed scriptwriting rule in the book. Then it throws them the finger in the rear-view mirror as it roars away, yet somehow it manages to get away with all of it. It's less of a film than a cataclysmic event, and make no mistake, it's highly entertaining. In the way of far too many Hollywood blockbusters, you might want to leave your brain at the door, and don't worry about such niceties as sense, or a plot, because there is none (yeah, that's a major spoiler right there). Having said that, there's no denying the entertainment value of Fury Road.
The downside, of course, is that if you begin to make a habit out of creating films with essentially no plots by shooting a bunch of footage and then trying to make a story out of it when you get to the editing stage, then someone might start to think that scripts are redundant, maybe even decide they don't need scriptwriters at all. Which couldn't be further from the truth, but let's face it, that has never stopped people in the past. Unfortunately I think this might be the beginning of a new phase in the film industry, and I'm afraid that we might start to see an even greater dumbing-down (if that's possible) of Hollywood film in general. Which is a crying shame, because despite all the ways in which Hollywood craps on film as a higher art, and their habit of aiming their releases at the lowest common denominator, they are still the biggest single influence on the medium, and the Hollywood 'tentpole' films tend to define the genres in which they're released.
So my 8 out of 10 is scored for high production values, good performances, decent music and high entertainment value, but not for intelligent writing or direction.