Mad Max: Fury Road
(aka LEGAL COCAINE)
Mad Max: Fury Road has no delusions of grandeur, it knows its purpose, and it conveys it to you in a panic within the first minutes. Mad Max is what happens when a film has flames as its lead protagonist. The first scene zooms through backstory in the midst of a raw and barbaric chase, capturing your attentiong and somehow earning your trust. What the movie proceeds to do with both is nothing short of BDSM.
Tom Hardy is a brilliant actor yet somehow keeps getting roles where he barely speaks audibly — or in this instance, at all. Yet it works. Not sure if it’s because he’s damn good at expressing understanding and buried pain through gazes, or the Tony Scott (miss u) approved flashbacks. But it doesn’t matter because something on-screen blows up and a War Boy is catapulted eighty-feet in the air and it’s thrilling and hilarious. Contrasted against a steely survival-mode Tom Hardy, it all becomes diabolically, bloodlustingly entertaining. You find yourself grinning like one of those half-life mutants then checking yourself because the things that happen to them look like they hurt.
Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa is the force which gives the film its soul. She’s cloaked in dingy rags, wears motor oil as foundation, and has an “arm” that’s a prosthesis from hell. Even with all of that, determination is her most iconic accessory. Through windshields of the snarling metal monsters she’s driving, she nails each one of her hyper-zoomed close-ups. I can’t pinpoint the moment when Max and Furiosa started trusting each other, it was probably somewhere between the twelfth and fifteenth explosion, but also who cares.
The first thing I was asked after seeing Mad Max: Fury Road was “Is it any good?”…and I had no idea how to answer. A movie like this doesn’t aspire to be good, it removes itself from the scale of classic film in its first minutes. To rate it with stars and label it a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ movie misses the point of it as an experience. Its dialogue and predictable character execution can be criticized when applying the classic construct of film critique, but Mad Max is an infinite apocalyptic desert hellscape away from caring.
The only thing I can compare Fury Road with is the feeling I had playing Grand Theft Auto for the first time. You’re at first overwhelmed by the sprawling world you’ve been given and the uber-exaggerated characters in it. Some of them you relate to, others make you wonder about the mental state of whoever dreamt up that guy. Then, once you realize that the plot is secondary, you fill with the licentious desire to test the physics of this simulated world. So you lock your humanity in the bathroom, stockpile things that go boom, and lose yourself in wickedness for hours.
Everything I questioned the possibility of was answered — most times before I could ask. What if a Plymouth Valiant rolled on tank treads? OK, that’s badass. What if a 50’s Cadillac was welded to the top of a dune buggy that spat flames? Well then sir ‘badass’ just got redefined. What if a guy went all kamikaze with explosive-tipped spears, leaping from one rusted death machine to another? Even better, deal me in. OK so what if a guy was bungeeing atop a crudely welded junkyard creation wailing on an electric guitar in front of a hundred speakers? Sounds metal and I’m ready to rage. And what if a high-speed chase featured nemeses clinging onto the hoods of two unholy hunks of metal as they sipped and spewed gasoline into exposed superchargers because speed? TAKE ME I’M YOURS.
I loved this damn movie.
The best review I can give Mad Max: Fury Road also doubles as a disclaimer: it is insane, and you shouldn't see it unless you’re comfortable with accepting that you might be too.
