Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) | Movie News & Review | - Pop Movee

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MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

mad max: fury road (2015) movie

Genre | Science Fiction

Classification | MA 15+

Running time | 120 minutes

Released | 14 May 2015

cast

Tom Hardy ... Max Rockatansky
Charlize Theron ... Imperator Furiosa
Nicholas Hoult ... Nux
Hugh Keays-Byrne ... Immortan Joe
Josh Helman ... Slit
Nathan Jones ... Rictus Erectus
Zoë Kravitz ... Toast the Knowing
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley ... The Splendid Angharad
Riley Keough ... Capable
Abbey Lee ... The Dag
John Howard ... The People Eater
Angus Sampson ... The Organic Mechanic

director

George Miller

writer

George Miller ... (written by) and
Brendan McCarthy ... (written by) and
Nick Lathouris ... (written by) (as Nico Lathouris)

George Miller ... (character) (uncredited)
Byron Kennedy ... (character) (uncredited)

cinematographer

John Seale

music

Junkie XL

film editor

Margaret Sixel

box office result

Worldwide $378,858,340

Australia $16,071,753

North America $154,058,340

the best dialogue

Max Rockatansky: [Narrating] My name is Max. My world is fire and blood. Once, I was a cop. A road warrior searching for a righteous cause. As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. It was hard to know who was more crazy... me... or everyone else.

Nux: [In the midst of a massive, violent sandstorm, after witnessing his fellow War Boys sucked off the War Rig into a vortex] Oh, what a day... what a lovely day!

[Max appears and heads off Furiosa, the Wives, and the Vuvalini. They brake to a stop, and Max shows Furiosa a map]
Max Rockatansky: [points to the Citadel] All right. This is your way home.
Imperator Furiosa: [incredulous] We go back?
Max Rockatansky: Mmm.
Toast: [incredulous] Back?
Max Rockatansky: Yeah.
The Dag: I thought you weren't insane anymore.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015) MOVIE IMAGES

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Posters

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Posters

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015) STORY SYNOPSIS

Years after the collapse of civilization, the tyrannical Immortan Joe enslaves apocalypse survivors inside the desert fortress the Citadel. When the warrior Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) leads the despot's five wives in a daring escape, she forges an alliance with Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), a loner and former captive. Fortified in the massive, armored truck the War Rig, they try to outrun the ruthless warlord and his henchmen in a deadly high-speed chase through the Wasteland.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty | Review date 14 May 2015
Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Australian film director George Miller indulges in some sentimental, ethanol-infused action as he returns to his feature film origins in Mad Max: Fury Road. Along time ago (in 1979), George Miller and movie-making partner Byron Kennedy unleashed the cult classic Mad Max upon Australian audiences and, along the way, set a young Mel Gibson on the path to 1980s action movie super stardom. Two years later, Mad Max 2 was released, but in foreign markets the focus was more on the Road Warrior sub-title rather than the titular anti-hero. The second movie found a far broader audience and with Warner Bros handling US distribution, the success of the second film demanded a third. This is where the franchise lost its edge, as Beyond Thunderdome, in an attempt to appeal to a mainstream audience in foreign markets, brought a softening of the action, violence and spectacle that had made the second film so exhilarating.

Mad Max: Fury Road takes the best elements of all three prior films, gives them a good shake, adds a very strong female cast and aims to give the audience good old action entertainment. The overwhelming positive about Fury Road is its authenticity. Rumoured to have cost upward of $150 million to make, this film puts to shame many comparable big-budget action films that feel more animated and rely far too heavily on blue and green screen. This film puts it all up on the screen in the most physical way possible. The car stunts are simply amazing and it’s a credit to Miller and Cinematographer John Seale that they managed to capture so much real footage and have not had to rely heavily on post-production to achieve their desired shots.

The Mad Max franchise has never known for its narrative brilliance, but Fury Road significantly improves the story-telling from the previous films and introduces a new perspective (in the form of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa) to balance the traditional one-dimensional approach of Max Rockatansky (this time played by British actor Tom Hardy) as the lone warrior roaming the wastelands of a ruined world. Nick Lathouris, who was Grease Rat in the 1979 Mad Max, and Storyboard Artist Brendan McCarthy, helped Miller craft the Fury Road script and this collaboration has added depth to the mythology and far more detail to the world that surrounds Max. Many of the ‘Heavy Metal’ influences have been carried over from the previous films and Fury Road’s visual design says as much about its story as the words spoken by the actors.

Charlize Theron is really the star of this movie. Her character – Imperator Furiosa – sets the story in motion when she abducts the teenage wives of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Bynre, playing a different character to his 1979 ‘Toecutter’); who have been enslaved for the sole purpose of breeding make Warlords. Max becomes involved when he becomes an involuntary blood bank for Nicholas Hoult’s Nux, one of Immortan Joe’s disciples who joins the chase to hunt Furiosa and regain Joe’s wives for him. Strapped to the front of Nux’s pursuit vehicle, Max endures all sorts of physical punishment and only manages to free himself when a huge dust storm engulfs the high-speed pursuit across the desert. Furiosa and the quintet of young wives (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoe Kravitz, Riley Keough, Abby Lee & Courtney Eaton) are thrust into an uneasy alliance with Max as Joe converges upon them.

The action seldom relents from this point until the end of the film, as Furiosa must come to accept that Max can help her in efforts to escape the masochistic tyranny of Immortan Joe. Along the way a host of other great Australian actors and celebrities pop-up along the way including John Howard, Richard Carter, Angus Sampson, Melissa Jaffer and Megan Gale. There can be no criticism of Miller in his casting of Australians in supporting roles, despite having to shift the film’s production from Broken Hill to the deserts of Western Namibia after heavy rains turned Australia’s Simpson Desert in a flower-strewn plain for over two years. In the end however, it’s not the desert location that makes Mad Max: Fury Road a unique cinematic vision, but Miller’s dedication to maintaining the authenticity of his original trilogy that helps this film to distinguish itself from the current crowd of CGI-heavy formulaic blockbusters. Mad Max: Fury Road re-establishes the franchise in all its glory, reaching its destination hard and fast, much like the romance Australians have had with the high-octane, brute force machines to which the film pays tribute!