In the decades since they first hit theaters, the original “Mad Max” and its follow-ups “The Road Warrior” and “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” have become so influential that it’s easy to forget that they were little more than Australian exploitation films. They were short, brutal, cheaply made and designed primarily to provide viewers with quick, sadistic thrills.
But they worked because of Mel Gibson, and because of the diabolical genius of creator George Miller, who masterminded not only some of the most memorable vehicle stunts in movie history, but an entire weird world in which to stage them.
“Mad Max: Fury Road” is Mr. Miller’s first foray into the series in 30 years, and although it is bigger and more ambitious in every way than any of its predecessors, it is still essentially an “Ozploitation” film: a crazy, grotesque, twisted, grungy and unabashedly violent action picture made by an individual with a strange and singular vision — and one that just happens to have a $150 million budget behind it.
In other words, it is still fundamentally a “Mad Max” movie, just more so. This is precisely what makes it so glorious.
Even beyond the movie’s multitude of spectacular stunts and whacked-out imagery, what may be most astounding about the film is simply that it exists. In development since the late 1990s, “Fury Road” was one of those forever-delayed Hollywood dream projects that never seemed to get off the ground. And yet after all those years, it’s not only here, it’s marvelous — almost exactly the movie you hoped and imagined it would be.
Once again, credit goes to Mr. Miller, now 70, whose gift for freak show world-building is still remarkably evident. Like its predecessors, “Fury Road” takes place in a punk rock post-apocalyptic wasteland built out of the scraps of the old world.
Visually, the movie is gorgeous and bizarre, mixing arid beauty with apocalyptic shockers: The movie starts with Max, now played by Tom Hardy, munching on a two-headed lizard. He’s then chased down and taken captive by a crazed cult run by the menacing Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). With his scars and a breathing mask, Joe resembles a kind of desert Darth Vader, but he’s really just an authoritarian water monopolist.
The chase gets going when Joe sends one of his lieutenants, the one-armed Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), out on a trading run. Instead, Furiosa takes Joe’s young wives, intent on saving them from his abuse. Max ends up along for the ride, and eventually he and Furiosa become allies on the run from Joe and some of his warlord pals, other apocalyptic monopolists who control bullets and gas.
Mr. Hardy is gruff and fine, but he’s no Mel Gibson and, somewhat strangely for a film with the words “Mad Max” in the title, he often seems to exist at the film’s periphery. Instead, the movie belongs to Miss Theron, who imbues her desert war woman with a superb sense of drive and dignity.
“Fury Road” is essentially a two-hour chase sequence, and every single one of the big action set pieces is staged and timed with precision ferocity. There’s plenty of chaos on screen, but unlike so many megabudget movies in recent years, there’s never any confusion, because Mr. Miller shot and edited each sequence with an emphasis on pacing and clarity.
The movie’s endless array of vehicle crashes, flips and leaps, meanwhile, were performed with real vehicles and minimal computer imagery, giving the movie a sense of tactile reality. Crushed cars look like shredded rubber and twisted metal rather than elaborate digital models inserted after the fact.
The startling clarity and physicality of the vehicle mayhem make for some of the most memorably intense action I’ve seen on screen in years. Watching “Fury Road” is a reminder that, for all the advances we’ve seen in digital effects, there’s still no substitute for watching real physical objects smash, crash and flash across the screen.
For the last decade or so, big action movies increasingly have turned into computer-generated cartoons. “Fury Road” is the real, rusted thing.
TITLE: “Mad Max: Fury Road”
CREDITS: Directed by George Miller: screenplay by Mr. Miller, Brendan McCarthy and Nick Lathouris
RATING: R for gore, violence and sexuality
RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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