Sexuality/Nudity Mature
Violence Mature
Vulgarity Mature
Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature
I can't say that I am a big fan of the Mad Max universe. I've only seen some of the Mel Gibson trilogy and it was not to my taste. I reluctantly saw Mad Max: Fury Road and I thought that it was excellent. I wrote back in 2015:
The insanity of the world created by writer/director George Miller belies an amazingly tight narrative. Most action movies are a series of different explosive action set pieces. Fury Road is essentially one long, exhilarating action chase scene.
Nearly a decade later, George Miller has given us a prequel to Fury Road to tell the story of one of the main characters of that movie: Furiosa. Unlike Fury Road, which has an incredibly tight narrative and (as one reviewer wrote) an economy of story), Furiosa is a character epic spanning many years across the wasteland.
But I liked it as much as Fury Road.
The story begins with a young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) who ventures too far from the safety of her oasis to take the fruit of forbidden trees. She ends up getting kidnapped by bandits taken in by the brutal, insanse warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Dementus' roaving gang eventually brings him in contact with Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) from Fury Road. Through all this, Furiosa witnesses first-hand the horrors fo the wasteland. To survive and thrive, she needs to get by on her wits and her cunning. During her travails, she encounters all kinds of people like the wise, yet callow History Man (Geroge Shevtosov), the violent and predatory Rictus (Nathan Jones), and the stoic leader of Immortan Joe's convoy, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke). What follows is violent and exciting, but always brutal as Furiosa grows into the a woman (Anya Taylor-Joy).
At nearly 80-years-old, writer/director George Miller still infuses his movies with the energy of a man a third of his age. The movie's action sequences are frenetic and thrilling, but told with by someone with the mastery of the visual medium. Contrast the mess that we find in a movie like Quantum of Solace, which tries to create the energetic chaos of a chase sequence by making an insane amount of cuts to the point where you cannot follow what is happening. Miller knows when how to use the camera. He moves it to its maximum effect so that it feels like insane pandemonium, but he secretly has complete control of the visuals so that he directs your attention exactly where it needs to go.
The world of Mad Max is horribly brutal. For some audiences, it will be too much. It is a world of dismemberments, slavery, canibalism... a world where most everyone treats life as a cheaper resource than gasoline. This theme is driven home in a scene where Immortan Joe tells Dementus to pick one of his war boys to confront Dementus' bandits. The movie is intentionally ugly in that way in order to highlight its utter inhumanity. But that is also Miller's point: what of human goodness can survive in this hellscape? This is a human race that has descended into Christless world.
The world is not just physically brutal, but it is emotionally brutal. There is one scene that has stayed with me and Miller filmed it so effectively. Two characters are caught by another. The two of them know that they will be condemed to the death. Their captor stands in front of them speechifying to his own soldiers. As he does, the two captives whisper tender words to each other and lean their heads on each other in affection. What grabbed me so much about this moment is that Miller does this all in a single-take wide shot. Any other director would have cut to a close of the two condemned and tightly captured their eyes filled with love and sadness and we would have heard clearly their last words to each other. But instead, Miller keeps us at a distance and we really cannot hear what they say. In the Wasteland, the tender moments are swallowed up by the violent insatiy of the world around them.
I think that the performances are pretty great all around. Taylor-Joy does a fantastic job as the determined Furiosa. Like Max in Fury Road, she has very few lines and has to convey most everything in her looks and body language. Another reviewer pointed out how the movie did not portray her has being a physical powerhouse with her petite frame. Instead, she uses her agility and weaponry to overcome her enemies. Taylor-Joy has to convey most everything with her eyes and her body language and is able to so admirably.
Hemsworth is clearly having a great time as Dementus. I remember being able to play a truly cruel person on stage once and there is some real fun to be had there, like scratching an itch that you can't in real life. I can see that same enjoyment in Hemsworth's performance. One of the really smart things that the script does is that it shows the difference between conquering and governing and how these two skill sets don't always overlap. Dementus is a vicious and brilliant tactician. But when he actually has to lead what he conquers, he is terrible at it and you can tell in Hemsworth's performance how little he enjoys it. But when the bloody battles occur, Dementus comes alive.
Browne does a good job as Young Furioso so that the transition she goes through feels believable. But I have to give special mention to Burke as Jack. His performance is very restrained, but he holds such tight control over his emotions that any feeling that comes through carries with it a lot more power. He speaks more powerfully with a look and the shooting of a flare than many actors do with pages of emotional monologues. I could not help being reminded of Russel Crowe's Oscar-winning performance in Gladiator.
The movie mostly a meditation on vengeance. Furiosa yearns for revenge and the karmic debt others incur towards her only increases as the movie goes on. The film is a little ambiguous as to her quest. Are we to side with her and revel in her blood lust or are we to see how this could corrupt her and turn her into the very thing she hates? I am actually okay with leaving a little bit of ambiguity here. The reason why is because of that intentional ugliness of Miller's world. He makes wickedness and cruelty horribly unnatractive. Even the smallest sentiment or loyalty is that much more precious because of it. Like Breaking Bad or The Godfather, sometimes the most moral stories are the ones that show you the repulsive face of evil.
The biggest problem with this movie is the pacing. Fury Road was 30 minutes shorter than this movie, but Furiosa feels like an hour longer. This is party an issue with covering such a longer span of time. But the movie could have lost those 30 minutes and the movie would have sailed at a better clip. The movie also ends with an incredibly long dialogue that brings sums up the main themes and character arcs. Rather than being cathartic, it felt a bit indulgent. And at a time when the movie should be speeding mightily towards the finish line, it instead begins to drag.
If you can stand the stark horror of the Mad Max universe, then Furiosa is a powerful movie that will have visceral action scenes and heartbreaking character moments that will stay with you after you leave the theater.
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