Action packed to it’s core, “Mad Max: Fury Road” directed by Australian born George Miller surpasses everything I imagined could happen in an action film. It has grit, nostalgia, heart-wrenching moments, a tense and awesome score by Junkie XL, and incredible visuals-great ingredients for one of the best action films I have ever seen. I’ve been hearing non-stop good things about this film ever since it came out. I had to find out for myself if this film lived up to the powerhouse reviews and awards it’s been getting. I went to the store and rented a copy from a Redbox and watched it. After watching it, I said to myself, “Why in the world didn’t I watch this in the theater!”
“Mad Max: Fury Road” takes us along for a crazy ride with Max (Tom Hardy) and Furiosa (Charlize Theron) who are trying to escape Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Bryne) and his horde of vehicular henchmen. The way this vast cast works together is flawless. All of the actors, extras, and stuntmen in this film don’t hold back. They put in 100% effort into this film, which gave me an awesome and thrilling ride making me feel as though I was in the chaos with them. Every time a crazy action scene popped up, all I could say to myself was “How did they do that!”
This film has no fat on it! The editing by Margaret Sixel is so good and cut to precision making every scene and every cut count towards the action. What’s amazing is the action and the way this film is edited doesn’t deviate from the story. A lot of action films make a story around the action instead of the action revolving around the story. Miller was smart and sneaky with this film because he made the story as simple as possible and put the action on top of it – a lot of it. The whole entire movie is one long action scene and it works!
My last little applause with this film is it’s direction. Miller broke off from the franchise over thirty years ago with “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome” (1985) and didn’t do anything comparable to this genre. He managed to come back from doing children’s animated films and go right back into “Mad Max” and gave it steroids. Another 1970s director comes to mind who went back behind the camera after a few decades and attempted to make new movies for the franchise. To me it seemed very “forced.” Miller succeeded because he was never out of practice directing, and he knows how to find balance between action and story.
Tom Hardy in “Mad Max: Fury Road”
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