I’m so
glad this movie is as great as it is.
Even before I heard such encouraging things about it, from both a
general film perspective and a geeky feminist perspective, I knew that I
desperately wanted to see it. I was
hooked by the time they got to the “What a lovely day!” line in the trailer
(and even more so when they flashed the names of the cast and I went, “Holy
crap – that’s Nicholas Hoult?!”) I was
prepared to see it as a mindless action guilty pleasure, but I’m very pleased
to love it as a gloriously insane spectacle of a stellar movie.
Full admission,
this is my first Mad Max film. Really, my strongest cultural understanding
of the franchise is the brief rip-off the kids on Home Movies make. That said,
I think I followed the basic setup all right:
the world is a barren, apocalyptic wasteland (nuclear war + depletion of
resources?), what civilizations remain belong to those with access to water, food,
and gasoline, and all sorts of crazy tribes have formed in humanity’s brutal,
dog-eat-dog efforts to survive.
Max is
a loner warrior tortured by the voices of the dead he couldn’t save, but a
fairly likeable one. At the start of the
film, he’s captured by the War Boys, the violent, half-dying acolytes of the
warlord/cult leader/false god Immortan Joe.
They’ve been indoctrinated to believe that the only glory comes from
dying in battle (and thus being born again,) but they’re ravaged by radiation
sickness and require frequent blood transfusions among other patchwork, which
is where Max comes in. He’s chained to
the hood of a War Boy’s tricked-out motor, serving as a “blood bag,” when he
gets embroiled in an epic life-or-death chase.
Furiosa, a warrior in Immortan Joe’s service, has stolen the warlord’s
five young wives and aims to take them somewhere green. Max’s path intertwines with theirs, and he,
reluctantly at first, helps them in their escape attempt as the full brunt of
Immortan Joe’s war parties stalk them across the desert.
I’ll
save the gender stuff for another post – it needs a lot of space, and I still
have to rave about the action. The
action sequences are off the hook,
exciting and impressive and, best of all, crystal clear. The desert setting means most scenes are
well-lit with great contrast, and an emphasis on practical effects over CGI
gives it a sharper, more immediate feel.
It is awesome to watch Furiosa
clinging to the underside of the war rig, the War Boys leaping onto of moving
cars, and the Pole Cats during their super-cool Pole Cat thing. It’s the kind of action that makes you feel
keyed up when you leave the theater, like you ought to do something crazy and
BAMF.
I’ll
mention Charlize Theron’s Furiosa first, since it really is her movie. She’s full-on stunning – driven, bad-ass,
protective, and soulful, and she can work wonders even without dialogue. As Max, Tom Hardy’s job is more to hold
everything together than to draw focus, and he does it well. I like his gradual move from
self-preservation mode to becoming an ally of Furiosa and the wives. And Nicholas Hoult, playing War Boy Nux, is
wonderfully eye-catching. Admittedly,
his is a more eye-catching part, manic and otherworldly, but he delivers on the
character’s potential and then some.
There are moments when it just physically does not compute that this is the same kid who played Tony on Skins.
Warnings
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