The Blabbering Inferno: MAD MAX: FURY ROAD.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Rating- 15Running Time- 2 hours
Directed by- George Miller
Written by- Nico Lathouris, Brendan McCarthy, and George Miller

Ever wondered what a live action Wacky Races with a 15 certificate would be like? With Dastardly leaving behind his purple hat and jacket and replacing it with a radical new hair style and a scary mask? And with the character of Muttley being portrayed by about a hundred crazed lunatics all with their own cars? And with all of the other racers teaming up and riding together in a turbo-charged tank?

Probably not…

But you’ve got it anyway with Mad Max: Fury Road.

The film is set in a dystopian future where the necessities of life are in short supply (most noticeably water), women are oppressed to the point where they are used almost exclusively for the purposes of breeding and milking (yes, milking), and pretty much everyone works for an evil tyrant called Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Furiosa (Charlize Theron), an all-action, one-armed woman, sets out on a dangerous mission to escape the clutches of Joe and return to her homeland. But, as soon as they become aware of her escape attempt, Joe and his army of loyal followers violently and relentlessly pursue her. Along the way, captive Max (Tom Hardy) manages to break free of his chains and teams up with Furiosa in her daring attempt to out-run, and out-gun, the crazed mob that is constantly on her tail.

The world of the film is such an unusual and strange one that it would probably take at least two hours of screen time to properly explain it all. So, the doesn’t even attempt to fully establish the world but instead starts with a five minute explosion of exposition before getting straight into the action and saying to the audience “just enjoy the spectacle and anything you pick up along the way in terms of the intricacies of the world is a bonus”. This is true of the story of the film as well; we are not actually told what the aim of Furiosa is until about 45 minutes into the film and even then it’s very brief. We are left to discover for ourselves what the plot of the film is whilst watching the non-stop action that 90% of the movie consists of. Everything we know about what makes a good movie suggests that this shouldn’t work but, in this case, it does and if the film was presented in any other way it would not nearly be as good as it is.

One of the first rules of movie making is to ‘show, don’t tell’ and Mad Max: Fury Road does this to the extreme. What better way to establish the wackiness of the film’s world than to show it, what better way to portray the madness of the characters than to show them in action, what better way to convey the action genre than to subject you to it relentlessly for two hours? It’s a brave approach to almost completely omit the first act of a movie as we have come to expect that when we sit down to watch a film the first 15 minutes at least will be there to establish a foundation that the rest of the film builds upon so, when that isn’t there, the potential exists for the audience to be thrown off a little. Certainly, as I was watching the film for the first time, I was still waiting for some sort of exposition even after the 20 minute long initial car chase then, when I finally realised that there wasn’t going to be any, I just enjoyed the film as it was and ended up admiring the choice not to spoon-feed the plot to the audience but to let them figure it out themselves, which isn’t a difficult task as all the information is clearly presented as the film progresses but it is not something we usually expect from a film.

But, while this approach worked for this film, it is not a style I expect or want other films to try to imitate as not only does it require a lot of variables to go in your favour (i.e. great acting, thrilling action, impressive editing, stunning visual effects) for the film to work without the usual formula but if every film was like this it would lose its special appeal and it would quickly become stale. After all, there is a reason why every other film we see has an almost universal structure and that is because it is a way of presenting a film that can be reused without becoming banal.

Overall, Mad Max is a fast, loud, action-packed film that delivers everything an action film should without getting dragged down in a superfluous story. The acting is brilliant all round, especially from the two leads (Hardy and Theron), and even with its crude, streamlined approach of movie making, it still manages to convey a powerful message. It is not, however, a style of movie that will become a universal success for years to come, and maybe that’s a good thing; this was a breath of fresh air and if films came out every year that were just like it then that ‘air’ would get crowded and loose its freshness – keep this style exclusive for this franchise and the sequels should be as entertaining and successful as this.