Cinema Review: Mad Max: Fury Road


Posted May 31, 2015 in Cinema Reviews, Film

Mad Max: Fury Road

Director: George Miller

Talent: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

Release Date: 14th May 2015

A sun-beaten dystopia in which humanity has totally degenerated, culture has given way to barbarism and a physically grotesque upper class rule supreme, the 2015 Cannes Film Festival was the site of the official premiere of George Miller’s fourth Mad Max film after a hiatus of 30 years.

What’s changed with the franchise in the mean time? Not a great deal, in this Stagecoach-style, precious cargo-ferrying, action/chase sequence-as-film that will be familiar in particular to fans of Road Warrior, the second, best and perhaps only good instalment in the series. Gone is the B-movie, gonzo feel of the original three, replaced by a muddy, Riddick-esque, bad-aesthetics-writ-in-IMAX sensibility that unfortunately works against its own presumably intended seediness.

The post-traumatic flashback hallucinations Max (Tom Hardy) suffers are clunky and misjudged, while the film’s vaunted feminism amounts to a disingenuous, G.I. Jane-brand fascism that suggests merely a more benevolent character to class oppression as a narrative solution to its patriarchal antagonists. Joyless, committee-engineered and mandated proletarian screen entertainment at its most cynical.

Words: Oisín Murphy-Hall

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