Oh, what a day, what a lovely day! 36 years after the vengeful copper first took to the deserted roads of Victoria’s post-apocalypse, Mad Max is finally back on our screens. It may have languished in production purgatory for nearly ten years, but Mad Max: Fury Road has an undeniable force and style that draw attention from its surprisingly flawed construction.
The titular Max (Tom Hardy) is a broken man, having seen too much of the world after the fall. Exhausted, he’s picked up from the wasteland by a cult of warriors to be used as a ‘blood pack’, but ends up being dragged into the escape plot of Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a soldier desperately trying to rescue five women from their captor, the tyrannical Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne).
True to its name, Fury Road is a testament to madness – everything from the costumes, to the locations, to the car chase set pieces that make up two-thirds of the film is genuinely insane. In particular, iOTA’s performance as the craziest one-man marching band you’ll ever see can’t be missed. It’s physically impossible not to be dragged into the excitement of the action. Safety supervisor Sean Rigby must have had his work cut out for him, as there’s very little CGI to pad the action: one of George Miller’s great achievements in this film is his reliance on live stunts and effects.
A good thing, really, as it seems that the post-production process is where the wheels came off this beast. Continuity errors across the film are noticeable and distracting, but when it comes to vocals, the film really bares its scars. The ADR is terrible across the board, with voices often out of sync or just performed without conviction. There’s a bitter irony to seeing Immortan Joe’s horse-teeth mask plague his otherwise intimidating performance, considering that co-star Hardy’s role as Bane suffered from the same. While the editing in the action sequences is stellar, it feels stilted when applied to Max’s flashback sequences.
Max is hardly the focus, however. One of Fury Road’s greatest assets is its surprisingly feminist tone, the core of which is Theron’s powerful central performance. She is the true star of the film and her female co-stars clearly look to her with admiration. There’s also an assured performance from Nicholas Hoult as Nux, who looks wilder than ever.
Fury Road, like its characters, is broken, but its energy cannot be suppressed. Witness it.
3.5/5 stars
Mad Max: Fury Road opens in cinemas on Thursday May 13.
