"FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA" - Review
Spoiler-Free Thoughts on FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (opening Thursday night).
I’m so glad that director George Miller didn’t become a doctor, and that he gets to play out his inventive, chaotic and nutty cinematic visions of a world gone mad.
In exploring the origins of Imperator Furiosa, the protagonist of MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, Miller shifts into a lower storytelling gear for this prequel to one of the greatest action movies ever made. If it feels like he’s comparatively coasting downhill in neutral, you’re not entirely wrong, but it’s not entirely a bad thing either.
We get a worthy new story that belongs in the Mad Max universe, filling out the details of where Furiosa came from, what she lost, who took it, and her patient calculation toward vengeance. Anya Taylor-Joy, in the near-wordless role, conveys so much through her piercing eyes. Alyla Browne is also a commanding presence as Young Furiosa, and both actresses work together to create this character, as she plays all the angles and bides her time while navigating survival in a dusty hellscape dominated by petty and fragile men who rule from a place of brute force. We get the big bads from FURY ROAD, in addition to Dementus, played with showstopping abandon by Chris Hemsworth (his best work yet) with just enough back row-reaching gusto (and deep pain) to not be a total cartoon. Tom Burke, as Furiosa‘s mentor Pretorean Jack, is a stoic yet benevolent presence, a capable warrior but also a reminder of hope. He also visually resembles Mel Gibson’s look in the earlier Mad Max films (does that make him Even-Tempered Max?).
Sometimes the more deliberate pacing this time around works to its detriment. The film runs 2 1/2 hours, and sometimes feels longer than that. Cruelty that was simply suggested in FURY ROAD is shown in more gruesome detail here. Gone is the rapid fire editing of the previous film, but on the plus side, we get gorgeous sweeping shots (lensed by Baz Luhrmann’s regular DP Simon Duggan) that make full use of the big screen format, and naturally this approach requires more time for storytelling clarity. Stylistically it sits in between FURY ROAD and Miller’s last film, the bewitching THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING. It makes sense to do this: given that it’s a prequel, this is an epic build-up to FURY ROAD’s epic release.
To paraphrase Tenacious D: this is not the greatest action film ever made; this is just a tribute. However, if the only real knock against this movie is that the other movie came first, you’re in for a lovely day and a wild ride.
I also recommend seeing it in IMAX if you can. A lot of recent big movies haven’t fully warranted the IMAX treatment, but at least at the AMC Rosedale 14, from the sound to the image, this one really does. (Thanks to FilmNorth for the passes!)
Zach is a proud member of the Minnesota Film Critics Alliance (MNFCA). For more info about Zach, the organization, or to read other great reviews from other great Minnesota-based film critics, click here: https://mnfilmcriticalliance.wordpress.com/