A RECENT article in “The Australian Review” summarised the three “Mad Max” films that 36 years ago propelled Australian filmmaker George Miller to fame as “a high-octane visceral ride into a dystopian future full of fast cars, violence and retribution”. Gee, I wish I’d written that.
The article suggests that the bill for “Fury Road” was of the order of $150 million. Seventeen hundred people were involved in the production, of whom as many as 1000 might have been on location at any one time. Mel Gibson is way too old now to play Max and English actor Tom Hardy takes his place. Once again Hugh Keays-Byrne plays the baddest baddie imaginable. In a land that God, if she exists, has forgotten – or more probably, mankind has blighted to the point where the current generation has never seen a tree – Immortan Joe controls the two fluids without which humankind cannot survive, water and petroleum.
Driving the plot of “Fury Road” is Imperator Furiosa, one tough bird missing the outer part of her left arm, rebelling against male domination of humanity’s remains. The film’s dramatic structure involves Furiosa and Max getting their act together and driving the giant War Rig westward to the green place where things might be better, hotly pursued by Immortan Joe’s hoplites mindlessly carrying out his orders even unto death.
For allies, Furiosa and Max have only a quintet of nubile young women wearing only just enough diaphanous cloth to mask the private bits, and Nux (Nicholas Hoult) a deserter from Joe’s force.
In time, the War Rig and its crew will join with a group of ancient motorbike-riding, rifle-toting women led by the Keeper of the Seeds (Melissa Jaffer) who tells them that the green place is to not the west but the east!
The plot focuses less on human characters than on vehicles. The inventiveness of the technos who designed and built them deserves high praise. The agility of the pursuers is impressive although, apparently, they performed their acrobatics on wires later removed by computer wizards.
The film’s principal character is not Max but Furiosa, a role imposing little burden on Charlize Theron.
In a cinema containing fewer than 20 people at an early-afternoon session on the first day, a couple several decades younger than I walked out about halfway through the screening. I kinda envied them.
At all cinemas
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