Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - Review

“I need a vehicle.” – Furiosa

The title isn’t really accurate, not if I’m ging to be as picky as I tend to usually be. Mad Max has nothing to do with this film. It’s a film set in Max’s world, though. So, it’s a post-apocalyptic, dystopian desert drama. It’s a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road (2005) which leads directly to that film – without any involvement from Max Rockatansky, save a quick cameo which works well to give us a kind of perspective to where we are in the story and how the films will blend together seamlessly. So seamlessly, in fact that despite having a different cast with Anya Taylor-Joy replacing Charlize Theron as the title character Furiosa, and Lachy Hulme replacing the late Hugh Keays-Burne as Immortan Joe, this is the most perfectly executed seamless prequel I’ve seen since 2011’s The Thing.

Briefly, the film starts with Furiosa as a child, she is taken prisoner by the warlord of the Biker Horde, Dementus played by Chris Hemsworth. Okay, here I’m going to stray into controversial territory and state that in my opinion, this is Hemsworth’s greatest screen role to date. Yes, yes…Thor, whatever. THIS is Hemsworth at his best. He plays the villainous, scheming Dementus with a touch of Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, making what could have been a one-dimensional villain into a rounded character that despicable though he is, we can’t help but like him. (And there is a scene where having driven his motorcycle -led chariot through a red smoke, his cape is scarlet and for a moment he resembles Thor.)

The story progresses to show Furiosa enslaved, what she does to survive, how she loses her arm just how vengeful she is - and to introduce Immortan Joe from the previous film, with his several “wives”. Fury Road could basically be summed up as “Furiosa wants to go home.” This movie will tell you why, and show you what she’s lost. When, inevitably, the blu-ray of this movie is added to my library, I don’t think I’ll ever watch it after Thunder Road ever again. It’s given that movie an added resonance.

But well written and perfectly performed as the story is, we have a tendency to go to a Mad Max movie to see the chases and the insane stunts executed by the Australian stunt teams. (I think this is why my least favourite of the Max movies is Beyond Thunderdome which cut down on the road rage. Or maybe it’s just me.)

I wasn’t disappointed. There are prolonged chases, involving tankers called war rigs being attacked by marauders at breakneck speeds, which will literally take your breath away. My previous favourite Max Movie was always Mad Max 2, or if you’re Stateside, The Road Warrior (1982) because of its relentless pacing and action with no real time to catch your breath. Honestly, director George Miller was evidently just warming up. This is two and a half hours of complete high-octane insanity, including a war rig with a spinning spiked flail at its rear, called the bommyknocker. It’s a kind of ballet of twisted steel, roaring engines and mangled bodies. Whatever it is that they pay Australian stunt drivers, it’s nowhere near enough.

So far this year, this is the thirteenth film I’ve seen at the cinema and several of them look to be contenders for my end of the year Good, Bad & Fugly list. This, however has gone straight to the top of the list, as the best movie I’ve seen so far this year.

The only reason I’m giving it an effortless ten, is that I can’t rate it higher. It really is a sprawling spectacle that screams to be watched in the cinema on a big screen with a kick-ass sound system.

Rob Rating = 10