Fury Road is named after the main character in the movie, Furiosa. This movie oddly enough is not so much bout Max, but her story. It follows her as she tries to free a group of women from a slave like society where they were being used as breeders. The entire movie is them driving down a road trying to escape their captors.
So how does a Mad Max movie work, where Max takes a back seat most of the film? Surprisingly well actually. Max has a few lines of dialogue, but for the most part his character is simply there to help move the story along. We don't even get to see what he is doing at certain parts of the movie, as it is constantly focusing on the female characters instead of him. At one point he goes off to acquire supplies and comes back very bloody. I want to see that scene, but we don't get to. It does remind me of that interview Tom Hardy had where he was asked if he felt that this being a mans movie, did the amount of females in it detract from the experience. It was a stupid question, but after seeing the movie I can sort of understand what the was trying to say. This is a movie about the female characters first, and Max second.
Charlize Theron plays Imperator Furiosa. Spell check does not like most of those words. She is part of the slave city and has a prominent role in the society. They seem to worship cars, and she drives the war rig which is basically a semi truck. The movie starts with her and her team doing a gas run in which she decides to go off road and tries to run. To her and the writers credit, her team goes along with it at first. They respect her enough to trust her. In a movie that is about "Breeders" it was nice to see a female role portrayed like that. It was actually a common theme throughout which I felt was one reason why the female protagonist worked so well. While they all had bad pasts and there was plenty implied, they never really brought those aspects of the characters to the front. They also did not make the women weak, so there was no reason to look down on them. Yes the main role of most of the females was procreation, but it was not a defining characteristic of who they were in the movie.
The villains name is Immortan Joe. I had to look that up on imdb, I had no clue what they were saying in the movie. I just assumed he was Immortal Joe and that his crazy religious zealots thought he couldn't die. It made sense given the context and what they all seemed to believe. A society built upon the idea of a good death, and that cars were some how holy. They would get excited at the prospect of death, but only when somebody was there to see or witness the death. It was a running gag for one character, and seeing how happy he was every time he was about to die was kind of endearing in a odd sort of way. They would also spray chrome spray paint into their mouths as some sort of boost. It would let them overcome some pain, and just make them more crazy for the most part. It oddly enough made me want to try it, but thankfully that passed rather quickly. I asked my wife what the hell they were doing, and she equated it to huffing which made some sense to me. One of the most interesting things about the movie was the society though, and how it reacted to everything.
The movie was essentially one long car chase. It did have small breaks in between the action sequences, but not for very long. As a action movie there are certain things you expect to see. Close quarters combat, which the movie had very little of. Gun fights, one again very little of. So what did it give us? Well vehicular combat, over and over again. Each time though was different, which helped it stay fresh and interesting. We got to see Joe's men fight porcupine like cars in the beginning. We saw how their weaponry worked and it was enjoyable. They then added in more factions each with their own style. Mad and Furiosa used mostly guns as Max was never really in a car for most of the film. We saw a lot of explosions and some really cool moments where they were using these stilt like contraptions to swing people from one car to the other to try and rip people out while driving. We had a guy with a flame thrower guitar playing the movies hard rock soundtrack as they raced across the desert. The sequences were all well done, very exciting, and most of all stylish. This was a very visually appealing movie, and all the effects were well done. They used a lot of practical effects from what I read, and that kept everything looking realistic for the most part. I would have liked to see Max get a little more hands on in the fighting, but maybe that is out of character for him. Once again I have not seen the other films, maybe fist fights were never this franchises thing.
Acting was all around good in this. Theron was the perfect pick for her role. She spent most of the movie cold and standoffish, but the few moments where she brought emotion into it were believable. Hardy did fine with Max, though he mostly just had to look cool and like he could hurt you. He is good at that, and the few lines he had were delivered well enough. His voice he went with was odd, almost like he was growling at times. It reminded me of the Batman voice that Bale did, though thankfully not as bad. Nicholas Hoult played Nux, one of the zealots from Joe's city. He was one of the better characters in the film. He had some sort of disease to where he needed blood. So he hooked a guy up to his car so he could have a constant source of blood. Then it turns out I must have misunderstood that part, because he clearly did not need the blood but just like it or something. I don't know, kid was crazy just like his entire city. But I loved it, and he was a stand out role. He was hyper and charismatic, and good on Hoult for being able to bring that all out.
The story for the movie was simple, but it worked to set everything up. The ending was decent but left it open to further explore that franchise if the choose to do so. The music was enjoyable, and I loved seeing the sountrack being played by the flame throwing guitar guy tied up to the front of one of the vehicles. It was the small things like that which made this film for me. Everything about it was just cool and stylish, but it never detracted from the experience. It reminded me so much of Fist of the North star, to the point I wondered which was the inspiration for the other. It took a over used setting and made it work again. Granted Max could have easily started that post apocalyptic trend given the time the first movie came out. Either way this movie was a refreshing experience. It was just fun, and sometimes that is all you need.
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