Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

 

Score:  A-

Directed by George Miller

Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke

Running time: 148 minutes

Rated R

Long Story Short:  Furiosa is a high-quality follow-up to the 2015 post-apocalyptic action thriller, Fury Road.  Newcomers Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth are steady, but the real star is director George Miller's degraded desert world that nevertheless teems with the desperate remnants of humanity.  They chase and slay one another in vintage internal combustion vehicles, keeping the audience rapt in scenes that come up with one marvel after another.  Highly recommended for theater viewing.

Decades into the future, Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland; Australia, the setting of the film, is now almost entirely desert except for a few miraculous oases.  Raiders stumble across one such oasis, and a young girl, Furiosa, tries to stop them from escaping and revealing the secret of her land to the many savage gangs that stalk the desert.  Instead, she is taken prisoner to one of the gangs, the Horde, led by Dementus (Hemsworth).  As she struggles to survive, Furiosa meets others in the ruthless, "mad" desert world and finds that she has the strength to hold her own.  Furiosa blends in with the gang, proving her value, but all the time waiting for the chance to escape and return to her beloved home.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a thrilling, well-made action movie; while it lacks the elegant simplicity of 2015's Fury Road, it is still a worthy prequel to that visually gritty, unique movie.  Furiosa portrays the growth of its main character from an innocent girl living in the sanctuary of the Green Place, right up to the events of Fury Road, where she has become a fully battle- and tragedy-hardened woman.  That's about fifteen years, quite a difference from the few days over which all of Fury Road takes place; this has both positive and negative effects.  The best part of Fury Road comes over fully intact, however: the action.  Once again, it is quite violent but with relatively little gore, and more importantly, it is such creative and intense work in an entirely unique setting.  Most of it involves fighting among vehicles driven at break-neck speeds, from motorcycles to souped-up, broken down cars to improvised gliders to the mammoth "War Rig".  There is surely a good bit of CGI involved, but there is also plenty of  incredible stunt work as fighters jump from vehicle to vehicle and pulverize each other in all sorts of ways.  Frequently, the action appears "sped up", the frame rate increasing to make it look almost cartoonish; this heightens the fantasy of it while keeping the grittiness and also symbolizes the brief, fragile reality of life in this desert world.  The movie's extended sequences are by far its best parts: the opening, with its hunting of raiders and subsequent escape; a War Rig chase scene reminiscent of Fury Road; and Furiosa (and her ally's) main showdown with Dementus, a particularly long, brutal showcase.  These scenes absolutely capture your entire attention and hold you in the moment, which is especially impressive for how long they last - they're worth the price of admission by themselves.

Alas, not everything in Furiosa is as good as its action.  The characters are fine - not classic, but worthy of following through the film.  Taylor-Joy's Furiosa does a good job following up Theron from Fury Road; neither of them are recognizable, from their bald heads and grime-covered skin to the hardened edges they present.  Taylor-Joy seems a bit too slight for this brutal world, but she still does well with the physical work and it feels believable enough.  Hemsworth is a very engaging antagonist, at least in the first third of the movie: while he's crazy and ruthless, he somehow also manages to often be funny and give off traces of sympathetic humanity.  There are other characters with lines, too, but to be honest, the waves of deadly, anonymous desert pirates are the third most interesting role.  As mentioned, the extended scenes are great; however, the movie's longer timeline results in a bit of disjointed unevenness.  The movie attempts to expand and further mythologize the Mad Max world, which is intriguing at times but overall is pretty difficult to follow who is who and why they do what they do.  The ending is also a bit of a letdown, largely because of how quickly and suddenly (to me) things wrap up and before you know it, we have the inevitable final Furiosa-Dementus confrontation.  It's at least quieter than most action movie finales, but I wanted more for Furiosa.  Still, what a ride!

***

Now this is more like the summer movie season starter I usually expect!  It made a paltry $26 million in its opening weekend, though, despite a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score and the popularity of Fury Road.  C'mon, people, this is the kind of movie you have to see in the theater!  Anyway, it's interesting that this is the second desert-based action epic I've seen this year, following Dune: Part Two from the spring (which was properly rewarded for its quality and entertainment value, as it's currently the year's top-grossing movie).  I'm finally becoming a little more discriminant about the sequels and reboots I will go see, but this was a no-brainer.  Hopefully more filmmakers will continue to bring this kind of creativity and intensity to the movie theater.  Until next time!

* By IMDb, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76616879