Review of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) by William L — 25 Apr 2016

While I agree with hunterjt13 and others about the weakness of this movie I have to begin with the caveat that I really enjoyed watching "Mad Max: Fury Road". I enjoyed the mayhem, the big world depicted, the over-the-top characters... I even enjoyed what Charlize Theron and tom Hardy did with the characters they were depicting. If the movie is a commentary on modern society, or if the movie is a critique of sex slavery, or if the movie is a deep philosophic expose of the need to face our demons, I'll leave to other critics. I give the movie many stars because it is exactly what I anticipated it to be, namely, a balls-out nonstop fortissimo idiot-show of eye-bending, bone crunching violence and shit blowing up. There is little reason to ask for more in our day and age.

That being said, the larger commentary on this video is parallel to the comments I made on Jurassic World (seen in the same evening as this film): a staggering amount of violence and a puerile plot. As I've already commented on the violence bit in the review of "World" this one receives the juvenile commentary.

What happened to PLOT in cinema? Even action films in days of yore had a cohesive and somewhat interesting plot most of the time. The ones that did not, the grindhouse cinema movies of the 1970s et alia, received little praise and rightfully so. But this movie has a frickin' 97% rating from critics and 86: from the hoi poloi!

Movies are not just for entertainment but are a medium to tell stories and when the story is thin the other flaws are magnified and no amount of Michael Baying the explosions, revving up the video ramping, or adding extra red dye to the blood bags can improve that weakness.

In Fury Road the plot is this; escape the trolls, drive out with the trolls chasing, turn around and drive back with the trolls chasing, defeat the trolls. Really. What else is there in this movie? And though I might see it again, the grabbing power of that plot is so weak that I would just as soon crack open a beer and watch the crows attack my garbage cans. Sure there were some neat explosions, some guys on long poles doing maniacal things, a dwarf attached to an oxygen machine, some sexy chicks getting run over by tractors (what else, like I said, do you need in a movie, amiright?) ...but there was also a guitar-playing fella with no face strapped to one of the trollcars who played vamp music the entire time. Who auditioned for that coveted job? And when he auditioned why didn't he learn more than TWO FRICKIN' CHORDS? Were the judge trolls like, "Uhhh, THAT GUY!"???? The soundtrack was like "Barracuda" without all the nuance - and on meth.

And all the Deaths Heads (C) that covered everything ---cars, walls, ceilings of cars, necks, rock walls, tires on cars, grills of cars, cod pieces ... what? was there some company like "Deaths Heads (C) Incorporated!" saying, "we got you covered, oh great Homunculus, sir"? when the chief troll demanded a Deaths Head (C) codpiece to adorn his groin? And how did these nubile creatures like Miss Kravitz, Miss Keough, and Miss Huntington-Whitely stay so pristine and lavender-smelling in the midst of this dusty, brutal, overheated world? After a long chase, wouldn't they start smelling like everyone else? And the ridiculous names "Imperator Furiosa"? "People Eater"? "Corpus Collossus"? "Rictus Erectus"? Hell - it sounds like something out of Spinal Tap or Loaded Diper. Might as well have had a character named "Biggus Dickus". None of this would have been problematic but that the story itself was a load of government cheese; enjoyable, tasty, but utterly worthless in the long run.

Maybe that's my main beef with the beefcake in this film. The whole thing seems like it was written, directed, produced by some testosterone-foaming 12 year old boy who wanted to see how much he could mash up women, tear out fetuses from the stomachs of their mothers, explode drug-crazed rockpunk psychopaths, maim old people, depict fat women hooked up to milking machines, portray anemic albinos hooked up to human blood bags, or explode vehicles in spectacular fashions. It is two hours of fortississimo violence, noise, revving engines, vamping guitars, ramping cameras, and sand. Without an ounce of story.

But if you like that sort of thing? Give it four stars out of five as I have so done. There is little reason to ask for more in our day and age.