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Mad Max: Fury Road has a very complex plot… well, actually, it has no discernable plot.
Then again, I can’t remember if the original three films did, either, where the part of ‘Mad’ Max Rockatansky was played by Mel Gibson. He portrayed the anti-hero over two great films and one sucky threequel, subtitled “Beyond Thunderdome“. The original director, George Miller, has brought the legend back to our screens, but obviously Mr Gibson is a little too old to play the man now (not that that stopped Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones) but he’s also made some ill-advised comments over the years and has fallen out of favour with Hollywood.
This time round it’s the current hardman of the day (name pun not intended), Tom Hardy (putting on a gruff voice that’s almost comical at times), who has previously played Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, murderer Charles Bronson in Bronson and will soon be playing BOTH of the Kray twins in Legend, due for release on September 11th. He is Maximus ‘Mad Max’ Rockatansky, father to a murdered daughter, husband to a murdered wife, and he will grunt his way through the scant dialogue.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Max has already annoyed one ne’er-do-well and ends up muzzled and strapped to the front of one of their vehicles, driven by Nux (Nicholas Hoult), Max’s muzzle very reminiscent of when he played Bane. Before long, he chances upon Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who has a beef with another muzzled creature, decorated with teeth, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne).
He has five wives, known as breeders who Furiosa has rescued from his home, the Citadel. Naturally, he gives chase and thus we have a near 2-hour chase movie with precious little dialogue – and that which there is often makes little sense anyway. The five wives – Toast the Knowing (Zoë Kravitz), The Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), Capable (Riley Keough), The Dag (Abbey Lee) and Cheedo the Fragile (Courtney Eaton). Then again, their names aren’t important as they’re never referred to. Some of them are blabbering on about wanting to go to “The Green Place”, some sort of salvation or promised land, I presumed; exactly where or what it is isn’t clear for some time.
Personally, I prefer short women to tall women, so out of this quintet, it’s Ms Kravitz who is my favourite!
And is Toast The Knowing related to Toast of London? We must be told! Perhaps that’s the plan for Mad Max 5?
As for the rest of the cast, even though you’re told their names in the credits, it still doesn’t help. It would’ve been better if they’d given us pictures to go with the names, as they were onscreen for long enough. I do remember there were a bunch of old women in this film who looked as rough as Carol on the second series of Benefits Street, and when I saw her on that show, I thought it was actually Steven Tyler from Aerosmith!
Mad Max: Fury Road is a film which just… well… happens in front of you. It’s very entertaining for the majority of the running time while you watch it, but it’s low on humour, which is a shame, and this is most likely because it’s low on dialogue. We’re also missing a really nice full-frontal grisly moment or three as we’ve had before. There’s a bit of that, but it disappears off the screen too quickly.
Oh, and to liven things up, there’s a blast of Verdi's Requiem late on, plus one vehicle stacked with drummers on the back and a strangely-unplugged electric guitar being played on the front by a wild-looking man whose instrument also doubles as an impromptu flamethrower.
However, it didn’t really need to be more than 90 minutes – like the first two approximately run for, and since it goes on further than that, it does drag at times.
And if you’re wondering whether to go and see it in 3D – don’t bother. It wasn’t shot in 3D, so all of those effects were added in post-production (one late effect being particularly blatant). I know with some 3D films, when you get perspective shots that show both something in the foreground and something in the background, you get both on display with the 3D effect in play, yet in 2D, the non-essential part is blurred out. I noticed that with a shot where Tom Hardy was in the foreground and Charlize Theron further back, and it made me ponder this for a moment. Then again, as this was filmed in 2D, I doubt that has been applied here as he can’t bring the whole image into perfect focus.
And why wasn’t filmed in 3D? Apparently, this was a ‘difficult shoot’. Well, boo hoo. Don’t expect me to pay extra for nothing. And that goes also for an IMAX presentation. None of it was filmed in IMAX so why is it showing on an IMAX screen? Just because it’s bigger? Well, bigger doesn’t always mean better.
Mad Max: Fury Road is available to pre-order on Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D and DVD, with a release date yet to be confirmed, and click on the poster for the full-size image.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 120 minutes
Studio: Warner Bros
Year: 2015
Format: 2.35:1 (ARRIRAW (2.8K) and ProRes 4:2:2 (1080p/24))
Released: May 14th 2015
Rating: 7/10
Director: George Miller
Producers: George Miller, Doug Mitchell and P.J. Voeten
Screenplay: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris
Music: Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie XL
Cast:
Max Rockatansky: Tom Hardy
Imperator Furiosa: Charlize Theron
Nux: Nicholas Hoult
Immortan Joe: Hugh Keays-Byrne
Slit: Josh Helman
Rictus Erectus: Nathan Jones
Toast the Knowing: Zoë Kravitz
The Splendid Angharad: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley
Capable: Riley Keough
The Dag: Abbey Lee
Cheedo the Fragile: Courtney Eaton
The People Eater: John Howard
The Bullet Farmer: Richard Carter
The Doof Warrior: Iota
The Organic Mechanic: Angus Sampson
Miss Giddy: Jennifer Hagan
The Valkyrie: Megan Gale
Keeper of the Seeds: Melissa Jaffer
The Vuvalini: Melita Jurisic, Gillian Jones, Joy Smithers, Antoinette Kellermann, Christina Koch
The Ace: Jon Iles
Corpus Colossus: Quentin Kenihan
Glory the Child: Coco Jack Gillies
Morsov: Chris Patton
The Rock Rider Chief/The Winchman: Stephen Dunlevy
The Prime Imperator: Richard Norton
Imperators: Vincent Roxburgh and John Walton
Chanting War Boy/Red Flare Warrior: Ben Smith-Petersen
Blood ‘Shed’ War Boy: Russ McCarroll
War Rig War Boy: Judd Wild
Milking Mother: Elizabeth Cunico
Ripsaw Driver: Rob Jones
Ripsaw Imperator/The Breakman: Greg van Borssum
Polecat Lookout: Sebastian Dickins
Black Mask: Darren Mitchell
The Accusing Dead: Crusoe Kurddal and Shyan Tonga
The Wretched: Cass Cumerford and Albert Lee
War Pups: Riley Paton, Ripley Voeten, Macyn Van Borssum, Hunter Stratton Boland, Nathan Jenkins, Fletcher Gill, Whiley Toll
Voice: Lee Perry
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.