The story cooked up by Miller and co-screenwriters Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris is no more complex than this: Entrusted by Immortan Joe with driving the large War Rig truck across the desert to an oil-producing outpost, tough ruling-class babe Imperator Furiosa ( Charlize Theron, with close-cropped hair and raccoon eyes) instead diverts it across the desert with an illicit cargo - Immortan’s harem of breeding wives, who have memorable names such as Capable, Cheedo the Fragile and, best of all, Toast the Knowing.
The slaves are covered in ashen white powder and live in a state of starvation and terror enforced by violent punks known as War Boys. Presiding over the Citadel is the fearsome Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, the nasty Toecutter in Mad Max), who has grotesque offspring, sports flowing gray locks and wears a toothsome facemask fed by large oxygen tubes. It’s as if Hardy was cast for his brawn, but ultimately used for his soul.Įxcept for its mechanized details, the heavy chains, pulleys and steam-punk/heavy metal aspects of which lend a certain 19th century feel, the world on display here is straight out of dire early biblical times. But emerge from it he does, of course, and slowly the man behind the victim emerges - first to exciting, then to ultimately touching effect in the final scene. When the time comes to hit the road, Max, his face confined behind a trident-like mask, is strapped like a grille ornament on the front of a marauding car, a predicament he is not expected to survive. Rewatching the initial two installments today, it’s striking to see how little Max Rockatansky (whose name is uttered just once, in the first film) actually does during long stretches of them, and so it is here at the outset he’s captured by soldiers of the Citadel and detained in a rocky hellhole where thousands of wailing captives perform slave labor while awaiting small rations of precious water dispensed by their tyrannical captor from his looming cliffside headquarters. While very similar to its predecessors in almost every way, the film has devilishness in its details: the tribal-style makeup, the endlessly inventive vehicles and armaments, the wild costumes and facial adornments, radiantly scorched locations that resemble - and yet go beyond - the series’ previous wasteland evocations, and a society equally lawless but more entrenched than those seen in earlier films (one that is, in fact, presided over by the same imposing actor who played the chief bad guy in the original Mad Max in 1979).Īnd then there’s the new leading actor, Tom Hardy, who’s so ideal a replacement for Mel Gibson that one wouldn’t want to imagine anyone else having taken over the role.
Perhaps the long gestation period served it well.
The new film certainly boasts a higher percentage of flat-out amazing action than any of its predecessors, and that’s probably enough said for most of its potential audience. One could plausibly observe that Fury Road is basically The Road Warrior on a new generation of steroids, and no doubt some critics will leave it at that like the second and best film in the series, this one is mostly devoted to maniacal anarchic goons chasing Max and his small group of rebels across a scenically parched desert and leaving some spectacularly destroyed vehicles in their dust.
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