I still can't believe what I saw today. I'll be honest: seeing those high scores on websites like RT and Metacritic and reading all those positive impressions from Gaffers and professional reviewers was shocking me, but after movies like Gravity and a few others I've become very cautious and was still very skeptical towards this. Heck, I even watched the first two movies just two days ago and thought they were incredible despite their age and still was not sure how to approach this.
Because let's face it: modern-day action movies have been boring for a long-ass time now. I'm not saying that these movies aren't fun though; I liked Kingsman and the Fast and Furious movies. I like most of the superhero movies. James Bond movies look nice. John Wick was a pleasant surprise and both Raid movies have potential to be cult classics a few years down the line. But then there are the Luc Bessons, the Michael Bays, the Liam Nessons and another bunch of seemingly yearly released movies that mud the waters. Movies that may attempt to push boundaries but fail miserably.
And now comes a movie from a 70-year old director that is kinda a sequel and kinda a reboot and kinda something new with a script that has been in the oven for decades and production that was in the news for a number of issues. A movie that by being released between blockbusters such as Age Of Ultron and Jurassic World feels like a old-ass relic between these super shiny super-mustang-magnum-franchises.
Mad Max: Fury Road is probably the best action movie of this decade. This is a movie that made me feel scammed by all those directors mentioned above while watching it. This is the next level, the logical evolution of the genre after the other milestones of the genre. Fury Road is one of them, it belongs in the same realm of those movies that nobody dares to compare anything with. Raiders Of The Lost Arc, Die Hard ,Terminator 2, Die Hard, Matrix, Dark Knight, Fury Road. This is the kind of level we are talking now.
I watched it and thought all the time: how? How did they pull off the action sequences that are pretty much unparalleled in what they do? Instead of focusing on a very few aspects of action, this movie has car chases, hand-to-hand combat, shootings, explosions and all kinds of available action-types and then some; and it masters each of this category with ease. Those cars - or we should say vehicles because there's some crazy shit out there - sound like they are fueled by Satan's piss and have been around for thousand of years, you can feel their impact on sand, rocks and other territorial conditions. Melee combat feels rough and authentic; every punch carries weight and despite the setting nobody punches like a superhero or whatever. The gun combat is just as exciting, if not even more than the melee stuff: all kinds of guns are being fired and instead of editing dozens of scenes after each other showing people just shooting without hitting anything even the dumbest grunts can land critical hits that can cause damage to the protagonists. And despite that the universe stays true to itself and never forgets its rules of ammo shortage and weapons being inaccurate due build quality.
This is the full package. Car stunts that leave you breathless; explosions and firestorms that intertwine into pure mass of destructions that shatters everything in its way; bullets and blades that actually leave their mark on their world and change the way characters have to behave in heated situations. Action that is well edited, that never lets you lose sight of it and that manages to give you a feeling for the placement of everything. Seeing all of this madness unfold in front of your eyes is a sight that to me was unlike anything else I've experienced from the action cinema and something that fills me with confidence when saying that this isn't just entertainment at its best - this is actual 'Best Director of the year' material. It takes a special set of abilities to pull all that shit off.
And it doesn't even stop there! There is the worldbuilding and storytelling, and people saying 'uh it's just a huge car chase' or 'the plot is thin' are really underselling it. This is easily one of the best realized worlds in cinema, period. This is a different place than our earth and it shows this every single second. When does a movie grab you and take you to a different place? Fury Road does this with costumes, with props, with characters so insane you won't believe it; and this is an important aspect of the movie. This is not just 'oh hey that car jumps from one tower into the next' insane, but pure human insanity. The people in Mad Max have their own culture, their own traditions and opinions on life and death. They have their own set of values and things they look up to and things they look down to. Even that ridiculous guy with the guitar makes sense if you understand why he's necessary. And all of this information is not being transmitted by a long exposition arc but by short lines of dialogues in-between the action and by their actions. It's like you are playing a RPG and fill up that codex in your head with informations almost every minute and the more and more information you have the more you understand not only the cruelty of the world in Fury Road but the motivations of the characters. I've never seen a movie doing parts of its characterizations with the help of world-building.
And the plot itself works because everything that happens has a fucking logical purpose. There is a reason why right at the beginning Max is being captured; that is not because of 'oh hey he's Mad Max, the badass road warrior that is a legend man' and all that shit, no: the real reason of why that happens to him is terrifying. The reason why Furiosa does what she does is terrifying. There is a reason why they drive to a certain location or why there are characters with changing motives. This is not a plot trying to be deep for the sake of being deep like every fucking Oscar nominee does; this is a plot trying to be authentic which is why it works without questioning it. You can break down the plot and be disappointed with it, but this is the same as not eating pizza because it is made of dough, mashed tomatoes and cheese.
Tom Hardy's Max is a traumatized psycho and while I really enjoyed performance, it really is Theron stealing the show here. To me, Furiosa is the best female action hero since Ellen Ripley from Alien/s. The sequel focusing on her makes me really happy and shows that Miller clearly understands what he's got here.
There are people able to articulate this movie's strengths better than I do and this probably reads like I've thrown shit all over the place, but let me tell you this: right after the movie was over, I was seriously considering going to the next showing. I fucking loved it and didn't expect to love it so much. We have been blessed with a true action movie classic and everybody should give this at least a shot. Just incredible. Incredible, incredible, incredible.
