A lesson to the ladies on how to treat your man.
Well-plotted. Carefully thought out. Superbly acted. Subtle, crafty humor. Beautiful photography.
And, oh yeah, violent as hell.
I’d been told it was good, but Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) is the fourth in the Mad Max series, so how could it possibly be good?
But it turned out to be damn good.
Don’t be a cheesy smartass with this guy.
Max, deprived of family, community, and maybe even sanity, has been wandering the Outback of post-apocalyptic Australia, a land mostly barren of water, life, and even fertility. As we open as he’s taken prisoner by the War Boys, a quasi-religious group that has more or less given up personal autonomy in submission to its leader, Immortan Joe, who controls the water and the women who are still fertile. The most militant of the War Boys function as a military unit, willing and even eager to sacrifice themselves, because they are terminally ill with some unnamed sickness.
But lives can be lengthened through the use of untainted blood. War Boy Nux, eager to retain his standing in the War Boys, takes Mad Max as his “blood bag,” resuscitating himself while linked via IV tubing to an annoyed Max.
In the midst of this, one of Immortan Joe’s subcommanders, the fierce woman Imperator Furiosa, is leading a flying column of vehicles to Bullet Town to collect supplies. Much to her men’s surprise, she takes an unscheduled detour, driving the big rig herself while her escorts bang along behind, trusting in her leadership. Little do they know that four of Immortan Joe’s breeders are hiding out in the big rig, trusting in Furiosa’s promises to be smuggled out of the jurisdiction of the War Boys. When Immortan Joe discovers his women are missing and Furiosa is off-course, the War Boys are let loose, and Nux won’t be left behind: Max is strapped to the front of Nux’s war buggy for the chase after Furiosa.
What follows is a very long handoff of lead roles as Mad Max, still active and vital, slowly cedes the primal role to Furiosa. Her left arm is half gone and she has more tricks up her non-existent sleeve than you’d believe, but between keeping an eye on Max, keeping the breeders safe, and eventually having to ride herd on Nux, who providentially is an engine mechanic along with being a nut-case, her goal, the Green Place, reputed to be verdant and filled with good people and to be found via territory held by hostiles, weather, and disasterized landscape, seems further and further away.
Until the vicious grandmas on motorcycles show up.
This story delineates the role of rationality and sanity in any culture bent on long-term survival by demonstrating that crazed violence, as we saw in the earlier chapters of this saga, doesn’t lead to cultural survival; chaos is not a long term survival characteristic. A structure for helping ensure stability and survival, a military unit, and a purpose greater than themselves motivates both the War Boys and those who represent the Green Place, and reminds us of the importance of same in our culture of fierce individualism.
And, of course, it celebrates stubbornness, a refusal to quit in the face of overwhelming odds. No matter how mythic it may sound, this story tells us there’s always a chance that last knife cast will hit its mark, no matter how many times you’ve missed before.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve wondering what happened to Mad Max since he played in the Thunderdome; hell, I don’t even recall how that movie went, even vaguely. Mad Max: Fury Road will make you care for Max all over again.
And, at the same time, for Furiosa.
If you like action movies, then this is Strongly Recommended.
