Review of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) by Tim T — 31 Mar 2016

From beginning to end, Mad Max: Fury Road is a non-stop, thrilling action film that manages to balance the characterization, effects, and direction of this chaotic dystopia in the most beautiful manner. Two times was the charm for me to be convinced that Mad Max deserved every single piece of acclamation it was getting. Director George Miller created the most engaging, fictional world with the right amount of action, with the perfect cast, and without never overloading the film with too many explosions or special effects.

The main cast, Tom Hardy and (Who would have thought?!) Charlize Theron, are just phenomenal and work perfectly together. While the plot can easily speak on its own, this would've never worked without the right cast. It is impressive how they manage to make a mostly serious movie with extremely small hints of comedy here and there, entertaining and interesting.

Now it is time to praise everything else. Sound and visual effects, production design, cinematography, costumes, makeup, and hair styling. Seriously. When I was talking about having an unexpected perfectly good balance I was not joking. The sound mixing and special effects are truly remarkable, bringing the movie to life and letting you in into the mayhem this world is. The costume, makeup and hair styling, hint at everything each character is, their personalities, and a glimpse at some back-story there is no time to tell within the two hours. And the cinematography directs you to what's important, and you are able to appreciate how involved each scene is.

Mad Max is successful because it manages to turn an insane film, a chaotic film, into one of the best action movies that I have ever seen. Mind you, I am not big on action movies. It is not easy to control and shape this amount of chaos and confusion into a good film. At one point I had to ask myself, is this really an action movie? Because it is so freaking good. Mad Max is just incredibly good.