Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max-inset

FURY ROAD, as everyone is aware, is part of the Mad Max /Kennedy Miller franchise.

Miller is a qualified medico from the tiny town of Chinchilla in Queensland. His original surname was Miliotis and his family were Greek post war immigrants to Australia.

Miller is a cinematic genius with a broad oeuvre which includes Babe and Happy Feet . We all remember the original Mad Max, made over 40 years ago, played by a tortured Mel Gibson. The film was a masterpiece and achieved cult status. Miller captured a post apocalyptic surreal world starved of warmth and compassion and populated by zombie humans. Cinema-goers  had never seen anything quite like it.

In spite of the subject matter this was a film that had a kind of urgency and insanity that made it compelling viewing. The nihilism of this terrifying reality was perfectly captured by machines being driven on an endless search through a dry and arid desert for petrol.

Now to the current production. The new Mad Max is a monosyllabic English actor by the name of Tom Hardy.  His face is etched with the pain of an empty and lonely existence.

Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa plays the typical new age 21st century woman …cool, calm, focused, decisive, and detached.

She leads her small tribe of women to a new life, away from a world governed by demoniac old men obsessed with domination and preserving the detritus of  a once modern civilisation. Fleeing these men is not easy and the movie chronicles a desperate escape through a terrifying moonscape terrain.

Theron manhandles a giant tanker with a bulldozer blade on its helm and the noise, the clamour, and  the action are relentless.

I couldn’t help but make the comparison another movie I had recently seen with a much bigger budget : Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Both movies are pure fantasy. I have  to say that I preferred Miller’s film. Despite its high octane nonsense I did connect with it. George Miller puts his guts into the movie and it shows.