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
