Seventy-nine years young, director George Miller has lost none of his creative energy or filmmaking chops.
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| Piloting the weapons-laden War Rig — and accompanied by scores of kamikaze "War Boys," who'll cheerfully die while taking out enemies — Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke, left) and Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) believe they're ready for anything. Boy, are they in for a surprise... |
Furiosa, the fifth installment in his increasingly complex Mad Max saga — chronologically, the fourth — is a wildly imaginative, audaciously breathless, pedal-to-the-metal thrill ride. This film never lets up, from its first moment to the last, and its 148-minute length doesn’t feel excessive. Indeed, I was disappointed when the final fade to black led to the end credits.
That said, Miller’s grimly amoral, post-apocalyptic nightmare of a violence-ridden future isn’t for the faint of heart; this is savage stuff.
Those willing to embrace Miller’s vision will be stunned by the spectacle, the awesome production design (Colin Gibson), the mind-blowing stunt work and energetically choreographed action sequences (Guy Norris), the crackerjack editing (Eliot Knapman and Margaret Sixel), the wildly bizarre and often repugnant costume design (three-time Oscar winner Jenny Beavan, one of them for 2016’s Mad Max: Fury Road), the similarly weird and wacky makeup design Lesley Vanderwalt), and the unbelievable energetic cinematography (Simon Duggan).
All of which is assembled, with unerring precision, by the equally gifted Miller.
Honestly, adjectives fail me.
For those not versed in the Mad Max saga — after all, the first three films were four decades and change ago — an off-camera narrator explains, during a brief prologue, that a global catastrophe left much of Earth uninhabitable. Most of Australia, setting for this narrative, is a radioactive wasteland.
(One must take this information with a possible grain of salt; later events suggest that this is an unreliable narrator.)
The subsequent storyline is divided into five chapters, each running roughly half an hour, each given ominously ironic titles. The first opens as adolescent Furiosa (Alyla Browne) and Valkyrie (Dylan Adonis) pick fruit in the Eden-like “Green Place of Many Mothers.” Furiosa spots four raiders; aware of the importance of keeping this realm a secret from any outsiders, she tries to sabotage their motorbikes.
Alas, the attempt fails; the raiders snatch her, bind her, and roar off to inform their messianic leader, Dementus of the Biker Horde (Chris Hemsworth). Valkyrie alerts Furiosa’s mother, Mary (Charlee Fraser), who gives chase on horseback, armed with a wicked high-powered rifle.
Lest you think Mary doesn’t stand a chance — a horse against four motorcycles? — that isn’t the way Miller and co-scripter Nick Lathouris handle warrior women. What follows is the first of many suspensefully mounted action sequences: impressive enough to have anchored lesser films by itself, but mere preamble here.
Alas, although the Green Place remains safe, Furiosa winds up as the brutal Dementus’ sorta-kinda ward; seems the guy is haunted by the (recent?) loss of his family.
Hemsworth plays this role with flamboyant, over-the-top Shakespearean intensity: an unsettling blend of bloodthirsty sadism and macabre dark humor. The result is quite unsettling; we can’t be sure, from one moment to the next, which side of Dementus’ nature will emerge.
And, as has been true since the Bard’s time, villains always get the best lines ... and Hemsworth delivers them with brio. He chews dialogue with relish, ketchup and mustard.
More tellingly, he eventually delivers an enraged, fifth-act speech that strikes uncomfortably close to home, in terms of the worst aspects of human nature.
Long before that, too much happens to Furiosa, to recap here. She winds up involved with four factions: Dementus’ Biker Horde; the Citadel, an elevated settlement run by masked warlord Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), which also possesses fresh water and agriculture; Gas Town, a massive oil refinery run by The People Eater (John Howard), which supplies the Citadel in exchange for food and water; and the Bullet Farm, run by the Bullet Farmer (Lee Perry) and his minions.
Gas Town’s look was inspired by Kuwait’s 1991 oil well fires; the Bullet Farm evolved from photographs of Brazil’s Serra Pelada gold mine, where workers were reduced to life-threatening hard labor just to survive one more day.
Furiosa, playing a very long game fueled by a desire for vengeance, spends years cleverly working her way up the ranks in the Citadel. She eventually helps build the “War Rig,” a massive supply tanker laden with all manner of defensive weapons designed to repel raider attacks, while navigating the Wasteland between the Citadel and Gas Town.
By this point, the role has been taken over by Anya Taylor-Joy. Furiosa has evolved into a resourceful strategist and hardened warrior with mad ninja skills. Despite Taylor-Joy’s diminutive size and physique, we never doubt this character’s grit, determination and strength. She also possesses a cold, hard stare capable of making even Dementus blink.
Miller and the stunt team certainly put her through hell. The film’s stand-out action sequence comes during the third act, when Furiosa — riding shotgun with Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) — is ambushed by Wasteland raiders during a supply run in the War Rig. Snap editing and CGI magic persuasively depict Furiosa’s nimble, jaw-dropping maneuvers beneath, atop and even within the War Rig, as she and Praetorian Jack are beset by all manner of would-be hijackers.
It's an extended, amazing orgy of eye-popping mayhem and explosive violence, which gets more and more crazed with each passing minute.
Given that Furiosa and Praetorian Jack have become fond of each other, we can’t help feeling that won’t end well.
Additional colorful characters include Scrotus (Josh Helman), Immortan Joe’s psychologically unstable son; Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones), Scrotus’ massive, dim-bulb brother; the Organic Mechanic (Angus Sampson), who handles doctoring in a ghastly manner; and The History Man (George Shevtsov), the aforementioned narrator, an expert (?) in pre-apocalyptic history and technology.
Series fans know that a key bit of awfulness must take place, before this film’s Furiosa turns into her older self — played by Charlize Theron — in Mad Max: Fury Road. It comes unexpectedly, and anticipates Furiosa’s climactic confrontation in this film’s final chapter, appropriately titled “Beyond Vengeance.”
Taylor-Joy has turned her into a wholly credible Unstoppable Force. She’s chilling.
Back in the day, the first three Mad Max movies were larkish, what-if? science fiction. Given today’s escalating climate crisis catastrophes —and, in Gibson’s words, “because we’ve dragged almost everything out of the earth” — this vision of the future is more disturbing than fanciful. Miller and Lathouris never dwell on this overtly, but there’s no question of their film’s underlying message: Beware.
Or, if so inclined, you can simply bathe in all of the glorious carnage.
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