Top 25 Favourite Films: #9 Mad Max: Fury Road (Dir. George Miller, 2015)
#9. Mad Max: Fury Road. Directed by George Miller, 2015
There is no film in action cinema like Mad Max Fury Road. From a series mostly famous for punching above its low budget weight, starring Tina Turner, and keeping Australia's entire film industry afloat with post-apocalpytic sojourns into the outback, all featuring Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky, a vengeful cop turned road warrior turned rough-spun hero, Fury Road is a searing visual masterpiece, a film that runs on momentum and pure adrenaline, a ruthlessly effecient marriage of image, concept, sound, score and performance. It is the single greatest action movie of this century so far, something that wears influence from everything from feminist film theory to the green movement, to Chuck Jones cartoons, demolition derbies and cirque soleil, and spits out fire, dust and blood across the screen with a rare majesty.
Fury Road is a film about redemption-its three central characters, Max (Tom Hardy), Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), and institutionalised and essentially brainwashed War Boy, Nux (Nicholas Hoult) are damaged people, wounded and hurt as the world around them, and are all redeemed in their own way across the film. Furiosa, who arguably takes the role of protagonist from Max-certainly compared to the previous three films in which he is undeniably the hero, certainly gets the longest, and most complex of these three redemption arcs, moving, as the film roars forward, from unwilling member of Immortan Joe, the despotic leader of a colossal Citadel, and controller of its water,'s colossal army, to her own individual, working alongside the mysterious figure of Max to free it, and Immortan Joe's wifes, from his control, as well as find her own path back to the family she was torn from.
Max, for his part, is a survivor, with survivor's guilt. Beginning the film half-feral, bearded and captured by Immortan Joe's men, before, when trying to make his escape, his demons make very physical appearances. It is only slowly, after his eventual liberation from Immortan Joe's War Boys, in a chaotic and positively apocalpytic desert storm, that Max begins to regain his humanity, with Miller adding to this effect perfectly by slowly adding dialogue to his otherwise silent, and distant performance, threatening the freed Wives at one point, before slowly gaining their, and Furiosa's, trust, at the film crunches through gears, up to its breakneck finale, where he proves to be instrumental.
But arguably the film's central figure is Nux. Hoult's transformation of the character, from ashen ghoulish brainwashed footsoldier of Immortan Joe (a toweringly misanthropic performance by Hugh Keays-Byrne, a previous villain the original Mad Max), to realising exactly his place in the world, a budding relationship with Capable, one of the former wives of Joe, and eventually sacrificing himself to save the rest of the group, is practically the film's redemptive arc in miniature, his paint eventually washing away to be replaced by skin. Hoult's character practically undergoes a metamorphosis, both in the physical way he plays the character, from his body-language-one scene with Capable is almost heartbreakingly sensitive, as, for the first time, he is treating another person with respect rather than hatred or control-to his very appearance, and even his cadence, from the feverish tone of the warboy to the comparative gentle tones of his later scenes.
Furthermore, Nux is emblematic of the film's other key theme, that of masculinity, and in particular toxic masculinity, typified in the the uncaring harshness and shockingly casually self-destructive War Boys. We see several of them throughout the film essentially commit a suicide bombing via throwing themselves into rival vehicles with explosive sticks, with the trappings of a warrior culture seeing themselves as Viking-esque warriors headed for a fictious Vahalla of Joe's own creation, clearly drilled into them from practically childhood, as Joe holds a vice-like grip upon the water, and indeed the people of the Citadel. It's a critique of any and every "cult", from religion, to the men's rights movement, to the alt-right, where an ideology takes over, brainwashing its members to be nothing more than tools of its leader.
And this is certainly where Fury Road is at its strongest, in its ability to deal with the themes of climate change, male machismo, female empowerment, and redemption, whilst a 100 mile-an-hour road movie storms through in the foreground. For, at its heart, Mad Max is that great adage of cinema, "show, don't tell" writ large-Fury Road is almost obtusely sparse of dialogue, with Max, barely speaking for most of the first hour, and other characters around him given just enough dialogue to perfectly carry off exactly who they are, what their motivation is, and where they're going. This effiency, this deliberate focus, not on words, but on deeds, shot in spectacular style, and on memorable, perfectly created characters, is integral to this film's success.
Take, for example, Immortan Joe's two "brothers", the tall and skeletal Bullet-Farmer, (Richard Carter) and The People Eater (John Howard) a grotesquely obese figure. Both have barely two dozen lines in the film between them, but their costume (for which costume designer, Jenny Beavan, won an academy award), their appearance, and the few lines that they do share, almost entirely with their brother, is enough to give you a perfect idea of who they are, such that by the time Max, Furiosa and the Wives face these characters, we the audience know exactly who they are.
This leads, particularly in the case of the Bullet-Farmer to an impressively baroque show-down that's part Western-standoff, part chase, and has him, blinded and wounded, bellowing about being "the scales of justice" and "conductor of the choir" of death whilst Verdi's Requiem blasts in the background, only for his showdown, in the moment where Max finally feels like part of the group, to happen, in perhaps the film's most brutally efficient moment, entirely off screen, sound and the rest of the cast's reactions the only part that we, the audience, get to see. Not a second of Fury Road's runtime is wasted-every moment, even in the thick of action scenes, builds its characters
And what action. Nearly half a decade on, no film has the visual power, the stack of iconic setpieces, the unstoppable forward momentum, like Moby Dick meets Roadrunner on sand, not so much scored as propelled by Tom Hulkenborgh's soundtrack, as much a diagesic manifestation of the encroaching warparty, drums, guitar et al, of Immortan Joe's forces, as it is an actual score. The fact that the vast majority of this film is entirely-for-real live action, but for some digital cleanup in places, only adds to a certain verité sense to this film. Real cars are actually going roof-under-wheels in a real desert, with real sand and real parts crashing and real explosions going on. Not since William Friedkin's Sorcerer have vehicles, in particular Max's V-8 Interceptor, and the positively alive War-Rig that transports our heroes for much of the film, felt like characters of their own, with the incredible (and Oscar-winning) sound design full of animalistic engine roars, which change and evolve as the film's battles rage on. It is brutal, viseral and spectacular.
Fury Road is a masterpiece on almost every level; a crunching metallic charge of road and machinery and heavy metal chaos, in which broken people try to redeem themselves in a chaotic apocalpytic universe, to step beyond the lives that they are thrown from the cultish toxic deathcult that Nux and Furiosa were brought up to, and the dead that Max must keep running from, and try and make something among this new world. Fury Road is an action movie for the post-9/11 world in a way no other film has ever managed to accomplish.
There is no film in action cinema like Mad Max Fury Road. From a series mostly famous for punching above its low budget weight, starring Tina Turner, and keeping Australia's entire film industry afloat with post-apocalpytic sojourns into the outback, all featuring Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky, a vengeful cop turned road warrior turned rough-spun hero, Fury Road is a searing visual masterpiece, a film that runs on momentum and pure adrenaline, a ruthlessly effecient marriage of image, concept, sound, score and performance. It is the single greatest action movie of this century so far, something that wears influence from everything from feminist film theory to the green movement, to Chuck Jones cartoons, demolition derbies and cirque soleil, and spits out fire, dust and blood across the screen with a rare majesty.
Fury Road is a film about redemption-its three central characters, Max (Tom Hardy), Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), and institutionalised and essentially brainwashed War Boy, Nux (Nicholas Hoult) are damaged people, wounded and hurt as the world around them, and are all redeemed in their own way across the film. Furiosa, who arguably takes the role of protagonist from Max-certainly compared to the previous three films in which he is undeniably the hero, certainly gets the longest, and most complex of these three redemption arcs, moving, as the film roars forward, from unwilling member of Immortan Joe, the despotic leader of a colossal Citadel, and controller of its water,'s colossal army, to her own individual, working alongside the mysterious figure of Max to free it, and Immortan Joe's wifes, from his control, as well as find her own path back to the family she was torn from.
Max, for his part, is a survivor, with survivor's guilt. Beginning the film half-feral, bearded and captured by Immortan Joe's men, before, when trying to make his escape, his demons make very physical appearances. It is only slowly, after his eventual liberation from Immortan Joe's War Boys, in a chaotic and positively apocalpytic desert storm, that Max begins to regain his humanity, with Miller adding to this effect perfectly by slowly adding dialogue to his otherwise silent, and distant performance, threatening the freed Wives at one point, before slowly gaining their, and Furiosa's, trust, at the film crunches through gears, up to its breakneck finale, where he proves to be instrumental.
But arguably the film's central figure is Nux. Hoult's transformation of the character, from ashen ghoulish brainwashed footsoldier of Immortan Joe (a toweringly misanthropic performance by Hugh Keays-Byrne, a previous villain the original Mad Max), to realising exactly his place in the world, a budding relationship with Capable, one of the former wives of Joe, and eventually sacrificing himself to save the rest of the group, is practically the film's redemptive arc in miniature, his paint eventually washing away to be replaced by skin. Hoult's character practically undergoes a metamorphosis, both in the physical way he plays the character, from his body-language-one scene with Capable is almost heartbreakingly sensitive, as, for the first time, he is treating another person with respect rather than hatred or control-to his very appearance, and even his cadence, from the feverish tone of the warboy to the comparative gentle tones of his later scenes.
Furthermore, Nux is emblematic of the film's other key theme, that of masculinity, and in particular toxic masculinity, typified in the the uncaring harshness and shockingly casually self-destructive War Boys. We see several of them throughout the film essentially commit a suicide bombing via throwing themselves into rival vehicles with explosive sticks, with the trappings of a warrior culture seeing themselves as Viking-esque warriors headed for a fictious Vahalla of Joe's own creation, clearly drilled into them from practically childhood, as Joe holds a vice-like grip upon the water, and indeed the people of the Citadel. It's a critique of any and every "cult", from religion, to the men's rights movement, to the alt-right, where an ideology takes over, brainwashing its members to be nothing more than tools of its leader.
And this is certainly where Fury Road is at its strongest, in its ability to deal with the themes of climate change, male machismo, female empowerment, and redemption, whilst a 100 mile-an-hour road movie storms through in the foreground. For, at its heart, Mad Max is that great adage of cinema, "show, don't tell" writ large-Fury Road is almost obtusely sparse of dialogue, with Max, barely speaking for most of the first hour, and other characters around him given just enough dialogue to perfectly carry off exactly who they are, what their motivation is, and where they're going. This effiency, this deliberate focus, not on words, but on deeds, shot in spectacular style, and on memorable, perfectly created characters, is integral to this film's success.
Take, for example, Immortan Joe's two "brothers", the tall and skeletal Bullet-Farmer, (Richard Carter) and The People Eater (John Howard) a grotesquely obese figure. Both have barely two dozen lines in the film between them, but their costume (for which costume designer, Jenny Beavan, won an academy award), their appearance, and the few lines that they do share, almost entirely with their brother, is enough to give you a perfect idea of who they are, such that by the time Max, Furiosa and the Wives face these characters, we the audience know exactly who they are.
This leads, particularly in the case of the Bullet-Farmer to an impressively baroque show-down that's part Western-standoff, part chase, and has him, blinded and wounded, bellowing about being "the scales of justice" and "conductor of the choir" of death whilst Verdi's Requiem blasts in the background, only for his showdown, in the moment where Max finally feels like part of the group, to happen, in perhaps the film's most brutally efficient moment, entirely off screen, sound and the rest of the cast's reactions the only part that we, the audience, get to see. Not a second of Fury Road's runtime is wasted-every moment, even in the thick of action scenes, builds its characters
And what action. Nearly half a decade on, no film has the visual power, the stack of iconic setpieces, the unstoppable forward momentum, like Moby Dick meets Roadrunner on sand, not so much scored as propelled by Tom Hulkenborgh's soundtrack, as much a diagesic manifestation of the encroaching warparty, drums, guitar et al, of Immortan Joe's forces, as it is an actual score. The fact that the vast majority of this film is entirely-for-real live action, but for some digital cleanup in places, only adds to a certain verité sense to this film. Real cars are actually going roof-under-wheels in a real desert, with real sand and real parts crashing and real explosions going on. Not since William Friedkin's Sorcerer have vehicles, in particular Max's V-8 Interceptor, and the positively alive War-Rig that transports our heroes for much of the film, felt like characters of their own, with the incredible (and Oscar-winning) sound design full of animalistic engine roars, which change and evolve as the film's battles rage on. It is brutal, viseral and spectacular.
Fury Road is a masterpiece on almost every level; a crunching metallic charge of road and machinery and heavy metal chaos, in which broken people try to redeem themselves in a chaotic apocalpytic universe, to step beyond the lives that they are thrown from the cultish toxic deathcult that Nux and Furiosa were brought up to, and the dead that Max must keep running from, and try and make something among this new world. Fury Road is an action movie for the post-9/11 world in a way no other film has ever managed to accomplish.
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