I was really looking forward to this movie for a long time and got my chance to watch it on the weekend in 2D (purposly in order to avoid 3D disapointments that really have nothing to do with the movie itself). Being a huge fan of movies, especially old action movies, I couldn’t help getting gitty over a Road Warrior reboot from the original director with a suitcase full of $$$.
There was lots I like about this new Mad Max film and some things that disapointed. First of all I love Tom Hardy, I think he is the next great actor of our time (although not for this performance alone), his physical acting here was a lot stronger than his dialog, so thank goodness Mad Max is full of action. I’ve seen him in roles that he nailed with perfection, but as Mad Max… Tom Hardy sometimes looks like the Mel Gibson replacment he is. All other roles were good enough to avoid the sharp edge of this critic’s pen.
The action scenes are awesome and they represent 2/3 of the entire film (thats not a bad thing). The chases come at you hard and fast with my favorites being the fist fight between Max and Furiosa, and the final money shot when the good guys were steering not just 1, but 2 war rigs. Although there were attempts to tie together a plot, there was not much time for story… and thats where I found the movie disapointing. Ya it wasn’t that kind of movie, and I really enjoyed the way the story was going (a sense of apocolyptic culture between the tribes and a prisoner breakout joy ride), but the story was where I felt the editing impacted the film (in a bad way) and lost an opportunity to raise the plot to the same hights as the action.
Hopefully there’s a directors cut that will add 20 minutes and show us the relationship between the tribes and the family dynamic between the siblings of Immorton Joe. Personally I fill the story gaps with my imagination and I am satisfied, but when it comes to the action, nothing is left for the imagination. One thing I loved was the tie ins between all the old Mad Max movies like the senior lady pointing the shotgun at Immorton Joe (An obvious link to the first Mad Max with Toecutter), also the tiny music box from the road warrior, and was that really Master Blaster from thunderdome?
One thing I didn’t like was the way the orcistra score drowned out the sound of engines reving, and metal twisting which should have been the real soundtrack of the film. This movie will no doubt go down as one of the best blockbuster action films this decade, although movie goers are so easy to please these days. I was hoping that this would be a game changer and win an oscar for visual effect in order to shift the industry back to practical effects, however, as entertained as I was… I didn’t get the sense that Mad Max Fury Road possessed that kind of revalotionary power. I will buy Mad Max on blue ray and watch it several times for the fun of it all, but maybe I’ll watch “Inception” afterwards to remind me that some films need more than my eyes to understand them.
My rating was 8 out of 10.