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| Courtesy: IMDB.com |
4 out of 5 stars
Family appropriateness rating: 2.25 out of 5 stars
Rated R
-Action violence throughout, some of it is bloody
-Some language including one f-word
-Some partial female nudity
Critics have raved about the new "Mad Max" film. It stands at a 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes*. One of reviewers, Chris Stuckmann — who I have nothing but respect for — gave it an A+, which he rarely does unless the movie is really good. While "Max" will entertain you for the full two hours, it is slightly overrated**.
Tom Hardy plays a rebooted version of the title character, a vagabond living in a post-apocalyptic, lawless Australia. He travels alone, running from crazy people who drive suped-up vehicles through the desert. At one time, he served as a police officer because he wanted to help others. When he saw his efforts were in vain, he quit.
In this film, he gets captured by a group who work for the tyrannical Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also played the villain the first film more than 30 years ago). He rules over thousands of people by controlling their water source and uses a group of women to bear his children. When these "breeders" try to escape with the help of Immortan's most-prized driver, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), some of his henchmen take Max to recapture them.
This leads the character (and by association us as an audience) on an epic, sand-filled adventure with excellent stunts, beautiful cinematography and awesome music, some of which a guitarist plays on top of a vehicle with fire coming out of the instrument.
As you can see from my score, I thought the movie was really good, and I can see why other critics raved so much about it. The one I mentioned earlier, Chris Stuckmann, put out a video in which he gives a checklist for what action movies should have, and "Fury Road" satisfies every criterium in it. In a nutshell, he says a solid action flick needs to feature an un-recycled storyline (check), a hero who is both relatable and vulnerable (check), a well-defined villain (check), quality stunts done at least partially by the actors (check) and steady camerawork (check).
(Though I gave out the list, I would still recommend watching the video if you are a film fan. Stuckmann explains the reasoning behind his list, and it is interesting. Just a warning for those who care, this video contains some depictions of violence and brief strong language).
It is notable how this film handles the hero's motivation. Max struggles with the conflict between desire to help others and fear of failing to do so. This does not bog down the movie. It is shown just enough to illustrate the character as a human being and give him motivation for his actions: he appears to not care about others even though we as an audience know otherwise.
The only thing about this movie that may be classified as a problem is some of it looks sped up. This is something the director did on purpose, probably for an aesthetic feel. I personally was okay with it, but some people might not be, including the friend I saw it with. Other than that, the movie does everything it sets out to do: tell an interesting story while delivering some fast-paced action sequences.
I wrote that this film is overrated because that is how I feel about it. Coming into the theatre, I had so many expectations, having heard so many good things about it. I thought I would have — what I will start referring to as — "shout out loud" moments, or "sol" (fun fact: this also means "sun" in Portuguese). These are moments when something so awesome happens that I want to yell "That is so cool!" The most recent time I can remember doing this was in theatres was during "300: Rise of an Empire." The beginning scene when the Athenians charge against Persian invaders on the shores of Marathon was so epic, I turned to my friend and geeked out about it, jumping with pure delight.
"Mad Max: Fury Road" does not have any moments that were like that for me. It has plenty of cool sequences, but nothing so mind-blowingly awesome that it made me want to disturb other theatre goers. Maybe the fire-blowing guitarist would have done the trick had I not already heard of him. In any case, he is still awesome and the movie is still worth seeing.
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*Rotten Tomatoes is a website that takes reviews of all the film critics and determines what percentage of them like the film. This score indicates that 98 percent of critics gave a rating of three out of five stars or higher. The average good movie is about in the high 60s or early 70s.
**I want to emphasize that this is my own opinion. It does not invalidate the views of other critics who enjoyed this movie more than I did. As a film-review blog, I do not think it necessary to say "in my opinion" within the text, but knowing how the Internet works, I do not want to come across as a prideful jerk who thinks only his views are correct.
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