Spoilers ahead…
You may have seen a lot of David Lean comparisons in the reviews for George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s not difficult to join the dots. The scope is epic. It all happens in a desert. Tremendous emphasis on visuals, with extraordinary use of screen space as well as 3D technology. Had Lean made a 3D post-apocalyptic action-epic, it might have been something like this: Lawrence of Australia. But Miller also channels a Lean-like state of grace that’s practically impossible to find on screen these days, at least outside a Spielberg movie. I’m talking about the mirage-like vision of women hosing each other in the desert. I’m talking about the chalk-white children. I’m talking about the flare that dies, its diminishing light signalling the end of a scene, much like how Lawrence famously blew out a match and indicated it was time we headed to the desert. CUT TO: sunrise over the sand.
This is not a review, so I’m not going to explain everything. But even if you watched Mad Max: Fury Road, you’d probably miss quite a bit, for the film keeps tossing things at you at the speed at which its vehicles move. When you’re travelling at 200 kmph, you miss what’s on a milestone. People Eater. Green Place. Blood Bag. Gas Town. The version I watched had subtitles, but I wished it hadn’t. Subtitles have a way of making you read, and this is not a movie that you want to read. This is a movie you want to read the Wiki synopsis of (so you know how it all fits) and then just see. See the outstanding action choreography. See how the camerawork helps, now zooming in to catch a tumour on a shoulder, now soaring to the skies and observing with godlike detachment. See how war is hell, but also so beautiful.
Because we live in a culture where anything serious is privileged over anything that’s entertaining, Mad Max: Fury Road won’t win any of the major Oscars. But it should. For a screenplay that speaks not to the head or even the heart but to the pulse and that strange part of the subconscious that conjures up fevered dreamscapes at 3 am. For Miller’s direction – he’s seventy, and he bays louder than Michael Bay. For the makeup and costuming – a bejewelled nosecap, a keffiyeh made of bullets. For the sadness in Charlize Theron’s eyes, as her ravaged performance reduces Max (Tom Hardy) to a supporting character. For the production design. For whatever the category is that recognises what it means to surprise the audience, put a smile on their face. You think a formerly villain-like character has softened. You think that’s a look of becalmed wonder as he observes a scurrying beetle. You think he’s letting it run over his finger because he’s going to let it out. You don’t think the finger is going straight to the mouth. It is the desert, after all. Food’s scarce.
As scarce as original thought and hard work is in big-budget films these days. Most times, what we see on screen is industry, the mechanical things people do – the set-building, the computer-crunching. But that’s not the same as hard work, which implies that everyone has climbed out of the summer-blockbuster box and worked hard towards a singular vision. That’s why Mad Max: Fury Road is like no other summer blockbuster. It isn’t even like any other movie around. I’ve never seen such a wildly imaginative mix of ideas and visuals – a matriarchal clan and metallic silver paint; seeds in a bag and a pregnant belly used as a shield; a comic-relief guitarist and a solitary tree in a desert; blindness and blood transfusion; collapsing rocks and a self-effacing protagonist. Every frame of this film has behind it this thought: How can we make this better, new, different, unique? Go watch this movie, again and again, for we may sooner see the apocalypse than an action movie that’s this artisanal.
An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Baradwaj Rangan 
Utkal
May 23, 2015
Agree with your every word here. Haven’t been this mind-blown after seeing a film in ages. Was wondering if yu are going to miss seeing this one!
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Olemisstarana
May 23, 2015
YES! Yes yes yes yes! All this and more! I’ve been waiting for this review, BR – thanks! I loved the movie! 😀
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Anon
May 23, 2015
Aana Sir, with all due respect, I think it’s all about an acquired taste really. Idhellam “connoisseur” type vishayam, I think. To a lay person like me the outlandishness was konjam jaasti thaan 🙂
(now, there that I got it out, welcome the downvotes) 🙂
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Gradwolf
May 23, 2015
How amazing was this! The production design, the sound. Oh the sound and the score! Those attacks on poles bending left and right. And the guitar guy. The end he gets and the 3D that comes in there. This was relentless. There’s no way to write an impassioned piece on Fury Road. It’s all wow! wow! what was that! how did he do that! Is she?! and then you’re a mess.
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hari
May 23, 2015
Trailor eh purila, padam puriyuma?
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MANK
May 23, 2015
Brangan,this is a true surprise
I thought you didn’t like these sort of full length action pics
Anyway its nice to see a gushing rave for a film that more or less deserved it,since this is not a full length review, I guess you restricted yourself to the gushing part only and didn’t get into the negative. Its being a long time since the 94 speed where you saw a film on wheels that’s one continuous action shot without relying on cgi
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MANK
May 23, 2015
konjam jaasti thaan 🙂
Well anon,I can sympathize with you. (No no i didnt down vote you ) i usually don’t like these sort of post apocalyptic movies. I think this film transcends that
I didn’t like the first 2 mad max movies,even though I loved the third one
Brangan,if we hadn’t had that altercation over Dawn of planet of the apes comparison with godfather 2, I would have picked a fight with u here over comparison with David lean and L of A-which I consider an all time masterpiece and way above anything this film offers. But this time I re read the piece a couple of times and understood the gist of what you were getting at, so peace
n 🙂
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Just Another Film Buff
May 23, 2015
Wow this is very high praise. And one of the more addictive pieces on the film (I’ve read over a dozen). But I still don’t understand why you thought the film was better than the regular studio product.
Wish you explained more on why you thought the action choreo was outstanding. And also your enumeration in the last para. If this sort of inventiveness was everything, that film called The Lone Ranger should have been canonized.
I found the film just plain tiring. An extreme minority, yes.
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Sutheesh Kumar
May 24, 2015
Oh what a movie, a lovely movie. I haven’t had this much fun at the movies in a long time. The story, the performances, the score and all the technical departments came together as whole to give us a magical experience. In the imagery i saw influence of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s work like the Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre. That’s not a bad thing at all. George Miller at this ripe age of 70 has proven that he is a visionary like no other.
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Pckiran
May 24, 2015
Psychedlic is d word… superb movie, d guitarist on the vehicle with drummers to boot was a sight to behold… In a movie cald mad MAX, d women took centre stage…
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Olemisstarana
May 24, 2015
I thought this movie was the equivalent of a tall glass of cool water after the aeons of parched action movies we’ve gotten so used to. Every decision Miller’s taken is educated, compassionate and still organic and essential to the story. I saw the movie last week and have read enough about Miller’s characterization, his choices (and on the other end, criticism from some corners) to really have nothing much to add to the discourse.
This is why I love this movie – in an environment where the female characters (almost all to a T – whether protagonists or auxiliary characters) are chosen to be attractive, fill the scenery, for the male protagonist’s character development, I was blown away by the Vuvalini. These women – these older women – fill up the frame on their own steam, exist to drive the story forward on their own merit, fight, kill and die not as filler, but as warriors. I really don’t have much else to say about this movie.
Going to see it again tomorrow. George Miller, take my money, make more movies. xx.
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chronophlogiston
May 24, 2015
Am so happy you liked this pic as much as you did. This is the most FUN I’ve had at a movie in ages. And I didn’t even get to see the 3D version!
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Santosh Kumar T K
May 24, 2015
Terminator 2: Judgment Day finally meets a worthy contender.
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Anon
May 24, 2015
Ah, finally I find a sympathizer (MANK) and company (JAFB)
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Utkal
May 24, 2015
Those looking for elaboration son why the film is great will find some here, in the short review of Namrata Joshi;
At one level, one is tempted to see Mad Max: Fury Road purely as an extended allegory. And it is one. About despotic leaders, civilisational crises and precipitous decline, about taking on patriarchy and organised religion and about flocking together, and gaining strength in numbers to fight for survival. It is also about the dystopic future that might be humanity’s lot and the frightening variety of ecological disasters that stare us in the face, a world without water, a world of gasoline wars. George Miller’s off-the-wall creation of a futuristic wasteland offers somewhat more. It makes all the action franchisees seem like stuff of adolescent imagination and turns popular superheroes seem mere toyboys in comparison. It takes action into an entirely new level.
Miller offers action at its most grown-up, fantastic, surreal, weird, insane, primeval and visceral all at once and never ever lets up on the thrills even once. He gives a new dimension to larger than life. The canvas, the characters, the assault vehicles—those rigs and bikes, the chases, the action and stunts are all bewilderingly crazy, eccentric and extreme. So are the places you whiz past in the adventure—Gas Town, Bullet Farm, Green Place. Not to forget the ear-splitting sound, the one thing I would like to nitpick on. And you are thrown headlong into it with the first road battle itself—as Furiosa (Theron) flees, with War Boys hot on the chase and Max (Hardy getting into Mel Gibson’s shoes), a captive of the desperado Joe (Byrne), joining hands with her.
The pursuit continues though desert, swampland and salt flats. In fact, you hardly get any time to pause and breathe. Miller sends you on a relentless run along with his characters, while giving you not a chance of moving an inch off your seats. It’s like being on a long simulated ride in a theme park that makes you shout and scream while certainly not wanting to get out of it. What’s more, it’s a movie that even comes to haunt you in your dreams. The strange flame-throwing guitarist is still stuck in the mind a whole week after the screening. And to think that this furious, fuming, freaky world should have been created by a man in his 70s, the same guy who warmed the cockles of our heart with Happy Feet and Babe, is unbelievable.
At the end of it all Mad Max: Fury Road leaves you at once exhilarated and exhausted. And it leaves you at a complete loss for words when asked, ‘how was it’. See it to believe it. A film you have to experience to understand. A world worth immersing yourself in for the time it lasts on screen.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article/mad-max-fury-road/294367
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Krish
May 24, 2015
Probably a silly question but is it necessary to have seen the 1st three Mad Max films before watching this one? Very confused because exactly 50% of the people I’ve asked so far say it’s necessary, the other 50% say it isn’t. Be my tiebreaker, please.
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MANK
May 24, 2015
Brangan even I would like to know what you thought of lone ranger.
Anon, cheer up dude. Life could be so much worse
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Cinemakkaran
May 24, 2015
Holy Holy.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hatTUJT0Kxg&feature=youtu.be
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venkatesh
May 24, 2015
The funniest thing for me is that George Miller also did the 2 Babe and Happy Feet movies 🙂
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venkatesh
May 24, 2015
Speaking of Action Films.., whats with the poster of Thoongavanam.., is this going to be it ?
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KayKay
May 24, 2015
Krish, nope not necessary to watch the 1st 3 Mad Max flicks, although a familiarity with them enables the identification of a few “Easter Eggs” strewn about by Miller for fans of the original.
Loved it, loved it, loved it! Saw it twice in a span of 3 days. Enjoyed the exhilarating action and respect a script which stayed true to the spirit of the earlier movies (desert wasteland populated by roving bands of diseased, savage grotesques, Max as the ever-reluctant hero who helps and enables while never committing or participating).
And the movie’s feminist subtext may be debatable (the doubt is cast right about the moment Max stumbles across 5 super models with perfect skin and teeth in a disease ravaged world of poor nutrition and scarce water taking a bikini wash clad in barely-there cloth wraps. Not that I’m complaining, mind you) but credit it for giving us Theron’s Imperator Furiosa who joins the Ellen Ripley Hall of Fame for awesome female bad-assery. How many testosterone-fueled movies can boast of a scene where the HERO fails to make 2 shots, then promptly hands the gun over to the woman, who nails the target with the last remaining bullet?
The fifth installments of the Terminator and Mission Impossible franchises may be just around the corner with the 24th Bond entry bringing up the rear later in the year, but right now, the bar for awesome action has been set by Fury Road. And it’s set pretty high, IMHO.
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KayKay
May 25, 2015
“If this sort of inventiveness was everything, that film called The Lone Ranger should have been canonized.”
JAFB: Sorry dude, I know you addressed the question to B, but allow me to chime in with my 2 cents: It’s all about pace. Fury Road is a 2 hour action movie in the purest sense of the word, with an unrelentingly kinetic pace, it NEVER slows the action down or brings it to a grinding halt in favor of exposition (the bane of many an action movie these days) , which in itself is doled out sparingly. It invests in REAL stuntwork for it’s action scenes rather an orgy of CGI (something other “car porn” franchises like Fast & Furious and The Transporter can’t boast of) and lastly, in spite of the blistering pace, it gets you INVESTING in it’s characters.
The Lone Ranger boasts exactly ONE action set piece, delivered at the tail end of nearly 2 hours of a rambling and borderline incoherent narrative, headlined by Johnny Depp delivering a watered down Jack Sparrow schtick (endearing in Pirates, just plain weird here) and relegates the Ranger himself to a supporting role in his own movie. I’m not one of this movie’s legion of haters, but it’s status as 2013’s biggest flop and one of the largest financial disasters for Disney is well deserved.
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KayKay
May 25, 2015
Just realized, I addressed JAFB as a “dude”, falling back on the well-burnished sexist presumption that a film buff has to be a guy 🙂
Mea Culpa. I hang my head in contrition.
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Rahul
May 25, 2015
Girlfriend: I want to watch Mad Max :Fury road.
Me : Is this a movie? Is it related to that Mel Gibson movie?
GF: Could be , yeah.
Me: Since when did we start watching action movie franchises?
G: What about the time you made me watch X Men and Fast and Furious?
Me: Well X Men is not technically an action movie franchise, and at least it is a franchise i am aware of.
G: It is 8.8 on imdb and 98 % on Rotten tomatoes
Me: That doesn’t mean anything. IMDb has a bias towards new movies, and Rotten tomatoes is not reliable.
Next day:
Me: Oh well, BR has raved about it. Lets watch it next weekend.
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Srinivas
May 25, 2015
Thanks brangan for this unequivocal recommendation. Saw it last evening. Cant remember the last time I walked out of a movie my head reeling like that. Riding my little scooter back home, I felt like I was part of the action in the movie. 🙂 Will be catching it again in a day or two.
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brangan
May 25, 2015
KayKay: I have met JAFB a few times and unless he’s a Kamal-level whiz at prosthetic makeup, I can assure you he’s a man. As Vishal would say… Aambala!
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brangan
May 25, 2015
MANK: I thought you didn’t like these sort of full length action pics…
WTH! If I were the list-making type, the first Terminator would be in the top ten.
It’s just that I don’t care for lazily done action films — in the sense that I like action films to have the things I expect in other films too. Good direction, screenplay, performances… and not just stunts. In the sense that the space between stunts should have a decent sense of “cinema”about them.
Just Another Film Buff: I can’t even begin to explain why I felt the action was outstanding. It just sucked me in. The use of 3D and screen space, along with the the camerawork — all added up to a you-are-there feeling, which you don’t usually get. It was so visceral.
venkatesh: Why, Vettaiyaadu was also a pretty decent action film, no? That is, action in the Indian sense, with drama etc.
Here’s what I wrote about Lone Ranger:
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Just Another Film Buff
May 25, 2015
@Brangan: Haha, that concludes my social experiment on Gendered Discourses of Popular Cinephiliic Practices In South-East Asia.
@Kaykay: No problem with the post-script there. Film buffery is, after all, an exclusive boys’ club.
Just curious: Do you think real stunts are better than CGI, just by the virtue of being real?
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Just Another Film Buff
May 25, 2015
Also, in my memory, the last time a movie was praised to skies for its supposed immersive experience and you-are-there feeling was AVATAR. And we know how that film stands today.
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MANK
May 25, 2015
Kaykay, I respectfully disagree about lone ranger. It was a great fun ride for me. It definitely didn’t deserve to be the biggest flop of 2013-a year in which absolute crap like dark of the moon or a lazy uninspired sequel to despicable me were the biggest hits- this was definitely not a lazy film ,well conceived but not very well translated concept. Even the uneven tone is very intentional . Even depp’s perfomance was not a watered down version of POC ,but an original genuine buster Keatonesque take on stone faced Indian. I absolutely loved his perf.i prefer depp’s and verbinski’s oddball weirdness to studio manufactured assembly line crap any day. I am sure in due time,this film and depp’s performance will be reevaluated and it will attain a cult status
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MANK
May 25, 2015
Venkatesh, miller also made witches of eastwick, where Michelle Pfeiffer, Cher and Susan sarandon makes mincemeat of jack Nicholson’s devil. may be that could be considered as a feminist precursor to this film
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venkatesh
May 25, 2015
“Just curious: Do you think real stunts are better than CGI, just by the virtue of being real?”
JAFB : Absolutely , hence why the RAID movies are so good.
I am curious why no one has mentioned Apocalypto in here , that movie was really good.
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venkatesh
May 25, 2015
BR: Vettaiyadu was decent but that was almost 10 years ago ., i can do with a Kamal Action movie with a higher frequency.
MANK: Ooh , thats a movie to see , i have not seen it .
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Just Another Film Buff
May 25, 2015
Venkatesh: I’m trying to understand why. Is an extremely realistic CGI stunt inherently inferior to the same stunt shot for real? In other words, Does Herzog tugging that ship over the mountain make it automatically greater than had he had it pulled through CGI?
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MANK
May 25, 2015
Brangan,OK I stand corrected about your love for action pics. I suppose I misconstrued your comments – about finding lengthy action scenes tiresome that you made in some reviews – as your generalized opinion.so they were made in context of those films OK
But what is this obsession with kamal man 🙂 you had to bring him in randomly everywhere ya? and when readers accuse you of having “your kind of popular stars”, you play the shocked speechless man. This just doesn’t cut it 🙂
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sanjana
May 25, 2015
A critic is also a human being with likes and favourites. Until we get robots do critic’s work! And can we question robots?
I saw one Mad Max flick where there was not much technology and it was raw and appealing.
I love terminator series for the fantasy like in a nightmarish dream. Yes, nightmarish dream!
But I will skip this one reviewed here. It maybe too much to see an insect being swallowed even if one is very hungry and that too in 3 D.
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Mohit
May 25, 2015
BR and JAFB: Interesting point about these “immersive experience” movies. What did you both think of Gravity? I don’t remember reading anything from you guys about it. BR wrote a piece on stars like Clooney (Gravity) and Hugh Jackman (Prisoners) letting someone else be the hero, but not about the film itself. It didn’t work for me at all.
One such “experience-driven” film which I did love is Dario Argento’s Suspiria. Probably because unlike Gravity/Avatar/Life Of Pi, it revels in the sheer artificiality of its aesthetic instead of shoehorning “deep” “high-minded themes”. It isn’t afraid to be a “substance-less” film, instead allowing its “style” full reign.
Would love to know your thoughts.
(Put scare-quotes around some terms such as “style” & “substance” because for me, they’re really inseparable from one another. So are visual experience and what the film is trying to say.)
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venkatesh
May 25, 2015
JAFB: “Is an extremely realistic CGI stunt inherently inferior to the same stunt shot for real?”
The one exception to the rule is when you have a futuristic film like Terminator 2 where its actually set in the future and you have a license to indulge in clearly “fake” scenarios that cannot be done by human beings.
The best real stunts take a wide-angle and show you the entire choreography of the stunt. What you are appreciating is not just the stunt as such but the skill of the performer and if its coupled with pace and has a decent story behind it, that movie is worth its weight in gold.
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MANK
May 25, 2015
Venkatesh, I agree with you on CGI,even with huge strides in technology, the CGI pales in comparison to stunts done realistically. don’t know if you have seen the latest keanu Reeves film john wick, but that’s a perfect illustration of what you were saying. Its a pretty ordinary film, but what action scenes man. no CGI, no wire technology, no rapid editing. Just good old gun fu, shot using wide angle lenses in lengthy takes, you marvel at the speed with which reeves move through the screen. the sheer exhilaration it provides is unmatched by the recent avengers or any of the recent CGI infested blockbusters
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KaaviyaThalagani
May 25, 2015
YES. This doozy of a movie. HUGE action movie fan here.
Since this topic was raised here, I can’t explain the number of reasons why I enjoyed this over a film filled with CGI action, or most action movies in recent times.
Every scene/sequence had logic – a clear beginning and end – constructed in such a way that every HIT was fully realised, despite multiple things happening at the same time.
Case in point, the new Avengers movie (or most Marvel big budget films) never fully realise their action, most sequences (especially the hand-to-hand combat) are not even brightly lit. And a lot of the CGI/Character design work with respect to the stunts, goes plain unnoticed, either in the final edit, or in the grander scheme of things.
I get pleasantly surprised at the number of great “moves” or clever gadget/special-power-driven stuntwork I pause at or rewind, (which I didn’t register even after multiple viewings in theatres) once I get these films on Bluray.
I read that George Miller specifically had the frame-rate sped-up or reduced so every beat is felt. (wonder how much work it took to deliver seamlessness) You, as a viewer, could mentally recall WHAT LED TO WHAT, both in plot and scale when it came to the action, as opposed to the usual seizure we’re subjected to. This film is special since every sequence began and ended with a riveting image, elevating it as a whole as something beyond the genre.
(Like the FLARE that @brangan mentioned or the very last image of the film)
Another reason maybe that most action-movie directors now-a-days leave their best sequences ENTIRELY to either CGI or 2nd-unit directors/crew, take what “Fast & Furious 7” did with the 4-wheeled version of Zindagi Naa MIlegi Dobara’s skydiving sequence. Its existence is disputable but the stunts stood out from the rest of the film like sore thumbs, the only character development there was making Vin Diesel our favorite superhero.
The FULL involvement of the director in the entirety of the stunt-work or action sequences makes ALL the difference, it is HIS vision, afterall. Also, real vehicle/production design plays a key role. The car-bashing was realised with such beautful clarity.
Most importantly, the action here is everything. The story progresses WITHIN the action, characters are developed through BEATS in between the action – all without losing pace or rhythms of each sequence.
You don’t need me to tell you the little amount of dialogue, or lack of needless cringe-worthy humor (that most action movies today sell on) or even THE NUMBER OF FEMALE BADASS characters, all make tremendous difference.
Even when we get breaks in between the action, we always get the idea that Immortan might catch up with these characters, making the film feel like one long-chase sequence, atleast in theory. (For me, it did even as an experience)
I enjoyed the relentlessness, not just because I’d seen the previous 3 films, but that THIS FILM had just enough stops, from making it anything close to “tiring”. Also, notice how almost all characters are white?? I’m not sure the director was making a statement there, but it’s a thought.
Also, @brangan you might enjoy this. (Again, MIGHT.)
As with Django and several other popular films, their characters have fleshed backstories through comics. Since you enjoyed this film, as much as I did,
http://www.slashfilm.com/mad-max-doof-backstory/
^that’s the backstory of the flame-throwing guitar guy.
http://viewcomic.com/mad-max-fury-road-nux-immortan-joe-001-2015/
^that’s the first comic of immortan joe.
I don’t know if you’re a comic book fan, but you might just have a reason to start!
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KayKay
May 25, 2015
“As Vishal would say… Aambala!”
Whew! Thanks for the confirmation, B. Although as commenters like Rahini prove, there are women who are equally passionate about the language of Cinema. On a side note, why aren’t there more film geeks among the fairer sex? Discuss!
JAFB: “Is an extremely realistic CGI stunt inherently inferior to the same stunt shot for real?”
Venkatesh has responded with some pretty good points. For me, action is that much more exciting when I’m (here’s that word again) invested in the outcome. Meaning, at various points during the action scene, there’s a palpable sense of danger to the protagonist, a niggling doubt that they’re gonna make it through unscathed. Which a CGI stunt, no matter how realistic, takes away.
An example.
Venkatesh has mentioned the awesome The Raid. I’ll take as an example the climactic fight between hero and lead henchman set in a kitchen in the even more awesome Raid 2:Berandal. expertly choreographed with knives and the art of “Pencak Silat” (Indonesian martial arts), it has you chewing your fingernails in anticipation, because while the outcome is a foregone conclusion, you know the hero isn’t going to make it without being battered and bloodied himself. The movie also contains a car chase sequence that has to be seen to be believed, a marvel of precision-choreographed stuntwork.
Conversely, check out the battle between Iron Man and Hulk on the streets of Wakanda in Avengers. Nicely shot? Yup. Fun to watch? Sure. Were you invested in the outcome and damage to either one of the combatants? I rest my case, Watching 2 screen savers duke it out just ain’t the same kinda awesome.
MANK: Good points. As I mentioned, I don’t HATE the movie, but was extremely disappointed with it. A USD 200M budget and you get 1 set piece and the iconic William Tell Overture only in the final 30 minutes? And The Lone Ranger was very much an Action Adventure Western as opposed to a Revisionist one like Unforgiven, an arty one like The Assassination of Jesse James or even a romantic one like Dances With Wolves, and so the expectation for a little more bang for your buck isn’t unreasonable. By way of comparison, watch George P. Cosmatos’ Tombstone and even Sam Raimi’s criminally underrated The Quick And The Dead to see how much more fun they have with the tropes of a classic Western and how much more they subsequently deliver by way of excitement.
It feeds into the larger conversation I have with my fellow movie buffs as to how miserly are the portions of genuine spectacle being doled out in today’s large blockbusters. 4 Pirates movies can claim, at the most 3 major set pieces between them. James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day on the other hand gave you FOUR marvelously crafted action scenes in a 2 hour running time.
Mad Max Fury Road boasted Three, Four…or was that almost FIVE amazing action sequences?
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Rajesh
May 25, 2015
@MANK, There were some good Keanu Reeves moments in JWick, but still it was a horrible movie.
I wonder you have seen the Indonasian movie Raid. Could be arguably the best action movie. There is one fight scene in a hotel kitchen, I think in part 2, which will keep us on the edge of our seats (most fight scenes in both parts will). Absolutely brilliant.Nothing to do with CGI.
Another Australian movie, The Rover was also excellent. Am still not sure, if I must watch this Australian, though.
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MANK
May 25, 2015
Kaykay,I agree about the budget of lone ranger. It should never have cost 250mil. if they had kept the budget in100-120 mill range-like the first POTC , lone ranger could have avoided bad buzz and bo failure. you wonder where all the money went
And yes I loved tombstone- not only great action scenes, great performances by Kurt Russell and val kilmer. also quick and the dead is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. I loved what Sam raimi did with a limited budget, those crazy camera angles and zooms. really audacious
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MANK
May 25, 2015
Kaykay,reg.
portions of genuine spectacle being doled out in today’s large blockbusters
Well there is a scarcity of genuine action directors today. Look at the people making action pics today. Sam mended,Jose whedon,Chris Nolan… all these people come from the stage or indie film scene. They have no idea how to conceive and stage action scenes. Cameron, john woo, mctierman, Donner, martin Campbell, these are born action filmmakers. the last bond film was almost bereft of action and whatever there was ,was the worst of the bond franchise
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brangan
May 25, 2015
Let’s not forget Renny Harlin. When he was on fire, he was bloody amazing. That opening sequence of Cliffhanger. The mid-air transfer scene (copied later in Nolan’s third Batman movie). I loved his sadistic streak.
And of course, James Cameron, till True Lies.When I saw Avatar, I couldn’t believe it was the same guy. What a waste of a talent.
As a one-off, I love this Sidney Poitier film called Shoot To Kill, which is one of the most underrated action films IMO.
Here’s Harlin on action cinema:
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Balaji Sivaraman
May 25, 2015
KayKay, Regarding your point about the how feminist the film really is, I would request you to read this article: http://www.themarysue.com/george-miller-feminist-answer-franchise/
It really opened my eyes to how great the feminist subtext really is. For God’s sake, Miller got a feminist author to work with him on the script to add more depth to his women.
This is another article touching up on why Mad Max is being raved about for actually “shooting” action sequences instead of touching them up in post-production. I saw the discussion regarding why CGI action sequences are bad, and I couldn’t come up with a better explanation of it than this: http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/mad-max-avengers-cgi-computer-animation-action/
BR, I knew you would be floored by this one, and your article didn’t disappoint me. Especially the final line. You have a way of providing the perfect parting line for your articles. Brilliant! (To digress a bit, talking about the perfect manner in which you close articles, none are more perfect than this: https://baradwajrangan.wordpress.com/2008/04/19/between-reviews-forget-what-it-means-just-see-what-it-is/)
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venkatesh
May 25, 2015
And now everyone can stand aside , the Big Daddy is here :
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Olemisstarana
May 25, 2015
Second watch, loved it again. I got to see the movie without wanting to bite my nails to the quick this time and one thing that stood out was how little blood there is – in a movie where many are missing their limbs, where a lot of the gore is just literally to the periphery of the screen-gaze, the actual blood-iness is very restrained. Dust. This is a dust colored movie.
@Balaji Sivaraman – just read that article, thanks! I’ll add one I found hilarious – http://jezebel.com/the-new-mad-max-film-is-so-feminist-my-scrotum-killed-i-1705273679
Very tongue in cheek 🙂
@KayKay: Watching the trailer I remember wincing when Rosie Huntington-Whitley descends on the screen all dewy and tanned and …rosy but the story demands it. There is a reason why these women are so obscenely beautiful, and it works really well within the universe created. I doubt Immortan Joe would go looking to populate his harem with the more unfortunate individuals he lords over. These women are stolen for how they look, and therefore the choice, imo.
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KayKay
May 26, 2015
Balaji, thanks for the link. It’s still my opinion though, that one can belabor the points on the film’s feminist subtext a little too much. I aree with Miller’s opinion that having a strong female lead was expedient to the plot, in the sense that 5 women sheltered from the harsh reality of surviving in the desert wastelands would need a strong warrior as protector, and it adds a dimension of depth to the story that this protector should be a woman as well, someone more attuned to the degradation of being used by a powerful patriarch figure purely for the purposes of breeding and sexual gratification(I have a theory that Furiosa may have been one of Joe’s women before being tossed off his bed for…what? growing old? For losing her hand?).
For an alternate viewpoint check out this article:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/17960/actually-mad-max-fury-road-isnt-that-feminist
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KayKay
May 26, 2015
MANK: That’s a really good point. Where are the pure action auteurs of the ’80s? A pity that John McTiernan’s legal troubles derailed his career. I consider his trifecta of Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt For Red October as some of the finest action movies ever crafted.
John Woo’s “Heroic Bloodshed” brand of action was diluted through increasingly mediocre Hollywood fare (Face/Off being the sole exception)
Paul Verhoeven was shunted back to his homeland, his unique brand of savage satire and ultra violence criminally misunderstood. But watch Robocop and Total Recall to see how well the man could shoot action.
John Badham (Blue Thunder, Stakeout, Drop Zone) simply…..disappeared
James Cameron’s gone all Eco Romantic and Ridley Scott spreads himself thin by dabbling in all genres.
Walter Hill was an amazing action director, his 48 Hours, Southern Comfort, Extreme Prejudice and Trespass (NOT the Nicholas Cage/Nicole Kidman stinker) all superlative examples of what can be achieved in the action genre by a director of talent and vision. But his comeback, Stallone’s Bullet To The Head, tanked miserably.
B, I loved Renny Harlin’s Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss Goodnight. Today, he languishes, sadly, in direct to DVD outputs. But check out his Mindhunters if you can. Pretty good genre fare.
Venkatesh, Predator is, next to T2: Judgement Day, the only movie I have multiple copies of, spanning the evolution of storage media: 2 VHS tapes I wore out through overuse, 2 VCDs (anyone still remember this?), 1 DVD and now blu ray. For me to enumerate how amazing, how cool, how awesome this movie is would be to subject everyone here to a mini-thesis, which I shall refrain from, on humanitarian grounds 🙂
And yes, Apocalypto needs a stronger shout out. His fall from grace has unfortunately made a lot of people forget just how good an action movie director the original Mad Max could be.
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Gradwolf
May 26, 2015
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2015/05/24/the-waning-thrills-of-cgi/
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hari
May 26, 2015
I was going to ask John Wick, sequel of it has been announced. Few of the action sequences were top notch. Did any of you watch wild card, which also had few good sequences
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KayKay
May 26, 2015
hari: Wild Card, Statham movie that was a remake of an old Burt Reynold’s film called Heat?
Yup. Tonally uneven, but yeah the fights were top notch (Hollywood rarely disappoints in this aspect)
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KayKay
May 26, 2015
Olemisstarana: Oh yeah, I agree that the women needed to be looking the way they do as Joe wouldn’t exactly be filling his “harem” with “inferior stock” i.e diseased or deformed women
My point was that the fact that this movie chooses to parade such eye-candy should be an indication that it’s so-called “feminist” cred is suspect. Not that a movie needs such a label to feature well-rounded female characters (Aliens, T2 and Kill Bill certainly didn’t). The plot called for a strong warrior woman to be their protector and we got lucky Miller and his 2 co-writers gave us the layered and 3-dimensional Imperator Furiosa.
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Vijat
May 26, 2015
BR – The Terminator over Terminator 2? Is it because you were an 80’s kid?
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MANK
May 26, 2015
Brangan, I have seen shoot to kill and it’s a pretty good movie and since we are discussing action on wheels, one of the most underrated films is the de niro pic Ronin directed by the great john frankenheimer. some terrific car chases through super french locations and de niro at his subdued and sardonic best
Kaykay,it was not just his court case, mctierman shot himself long before with thirteenth warrior, a shockingly bad bloated misfire that ruined his reputation, something similar happened with other directors too who made costly misfires like cutthroat island, Geronimo, timeline
I think that’s when studios decided that they had enough of these action auteurs.the fact that the digital revolution happened around the same time and the record breaking success of CGI powered films like matrix and spiderman accelerated this feeling
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Olemisstarana
May 27, 2015
@KayKay: Ah, I feel you may be over-correcting in the other direction here. The women are beautiful because the story demands the actors representing the characters to be beautiful. I am also not sure they really “parade” around much – yes, there’s a lot of gauzy linens floating around, but I did not discern the sleazy gaze that one is so used to in such high octane flicks. (Eye of the beholder, of course etc. etc.) (I think Utkal said it best in an unrelated comment “Artistic integrity demands that the director let the characters be what they are.”) The only instance of nudity is the scene of the bait at the edge of the salts, and even then the woman is completely in control and the moment she needs to cover up, she does.
The wives too – their choices and the little snippets of dialog really rounded them out to me. The second time around particularly, the huge piles of books, the learning, the insistence on not killing unnecessarily, the small resentments between them… it worked.
This movie passed the Bechdel test with such flying colors that every other movie that just passes will be a disappointment (though I am glad the benchmark is so high now).
I saw the article you mentioned in your earlier comment, and I didn’t find it particularly persuasive – they called into question Eve Ensler’s street cred, which was unnecessary. She has worked extensively with women who were victims of sexual violence in the theater of war in Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and in Africa. Her criticism stems from another writer’s concerns that Ensler’s experience is “inauthentic” which imo is neither here nor there. Then she goes on to critique the body types of these women, saying that they are incapable of breeding because they are far too skinny and pale (!), so why would a warlord choose them. That’s kind of where I stopped reading. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
She seems to have a problem with cliches, and the subversion of cliches all at the same time. She actually brought up Adam Sandler as an equivalent… To me, the movie, while largely fantastic, was allegorical and yet has a firm footing in today. Frighteningly so. Everytime the antagonists described these women as property and things, I thought of the Tina Fey’s “grey-faced men with $2 haircuts” defining rape, limiting access to contraception etc. Too far? Maybe.
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Olemisstarana
May 27, 2015
And about The Lone Ranger – that movie was horrifyingly bad. Just shockingly ba-a-aaad. (sorry MANK!) I wish there was some way I could block out the noise from all the ridiculous stereotypes and actually just watch the movie as a brick and mortar being that exists exactly on the land it occupies, but I just can’t – BR, how do you do it? I am sure there was a lot to enjoy in the movie, sets, design, cinematography, but I squirmed throughout the experience.
Just the opening scene in the words of Adrienne K. (cards on the table, I read this after I saw the movie)
“The very first scene we are presented with an image of a Native person, in a museum–which presumably we’re supposed to critique, but there’s no questioning of Tonto’s position there. To me it reinforces the idea that all the Indians are dead, relics of the past, which is actually a theme throughout. This Indian is so silly and backward he trades a dead mouse for a bag of peanuts, doesn’t even know how to eat peanuts, and is feeding a bird, but it’s dead. Even the child knows that’s wrong. So this is the “new” Tonto? Definitely an improvement, amiright? (that was sarcasm. In case you missed it.)”
I guess in my later life appreciation of cinema, the one I began after taking a gender studies class in undergraduate school (ahem!), I am far too mired in the context of everything. A misrepresentation, willful or otherwise, of context renders a movie unsalvageable – to me. I look for voices that are represented, in this case Adrienne is a credible voice, and I will pay heed to her perception of how her culture is portrayed in a work of art (of course there are divergent voices there as well.) These movies – the cowboys and Indians genre – were propaganda when they were originally made in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and the hope was that The Lone Ranger would grapple with the boilerplate, inaccurate representation of the Buster Keaton era and inject some sincerity, some authenticity.
Ah… forgive the complete tangent. Or not… this review was about Mad Max, Fury Road, so I guess I am tangenting the tangent. TANGENT!
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Santosh Kumar T K
May 27, 2015
Oh man, I miss the voice-over specialist (died recently?) who would do these trailers exclusively.
tadantantatan… schwarzenegger . cameron . T2 . summer ’91 …tadantantatan
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KayKay
May 27, 2015
MANK: To be fair, the 13th Warrior was an extremely troubled shoot, and rumor is McTiernan was fired half way and author Michael Crichton took over as director. The finished product is apparently a vastly different cut to what McTiernan shot. So basically, 13th Warrior became to McTiernan what Superman 2 was to Richard Donner and Alien 3 was to David Fincher.
But McTiernan did make some dubious choices when he had Hollywood at his feet after the phenomenal success of Die Hard and The Hunt For Red October. Going eco-romantic on Medicine Man (which delivered the opposite result of what Avatar did for James Cameron), helming the Schwarzenegger vanity vehicle Last Action Hero (another notoriously troubled production) and the flat out terrible Rollerball and Basic. The Thomas Crown Affair remake was just boring.
Leads to another interesting thought of directors who were at the pinnacle of success and then torpedoed their careers with dubious choices in scripts.
Andrew Davis comes to mind. After the success of Under Siege and The Fugitive, he had his pick of projects and chose a small family saga with Andy Garcia in double roles. The film went down in flames, taking Davis’ career with it.
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Rahul
May 27, 2015
This movie is what big screen entertainment is all about – it is a big slap on the face of torrent seeders and downloaders. In its donning of feminist mantle, I was reminded of Tarantino’s death proof , but while Tarantino is interested in a poetry of violence, this one goes for the jugular , like a Rage Against the machine song.
Its sustained fever pitch also reminded me of Wages of fear.
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brangan
May 27, 2015
Olemisstarana: I wish there was some way I could block out the noise from all the ridiculous stereotypes and actually just watch the movie as a brick and mortar being that exists exactly on the land it occupies, but I just can’t – BR, how do you do it?
Three things here:
(1) What’s offensive to you may not be to me. We may have different hot buttons (apologies if this sounds porny, but you know what I mean).
(2) To many people, content is all that matters. But for me form is equally important. So if you have great content backed by bad form, I find it a problem (like a lot of those “well-intentioned” films). Similarly, if you have bad or offensive content but the form is great, then I look at whether the overall narrative works, in which case I may be able to overlook the bad/offensive parts (in the sense, I may mention it, but it won’t derail my experience of the film).
(3) I am not big on political correctness. I think people’s individual attitudes make for interesting cinema. If everyone thought the same way, cinema (not to mention life) would be terribly boring.
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MANK
May 27, 2015
Olemisstrana, I don’t take offense at your lone ranger bashing. its not a film for everyone. brangan put it very well. political correctness is not the first thing I look for in movie and it could make films really boring. just think of the great films we wouldn’t have had if the makers were worried about political correctness. Searchers, Stagecoach, taxi driver, raging bull, streetcar named desire, last tango in Paris, apocalypse now… you could go on. great films about politically incorrect characters and subject matter. With wife beating savages, racist psychopaths, sadomasochists and rapists, war mongers and ruthless killers in pivotal roles.
But I still wonder whether LR was that politically incorrect. compare it with the TV series where lone ranger is the lead and Tonto is nothing more than a side kick. Here the entire concept is reversed. Reid is the bumbling fool and Tonto is the heroic ,more intelligent lead.this has never been done in Hollywood films before.
The reason for the dead bird on his head and all that is explained within the film itself. Again its a fantasy, just look at the last scene where Tonto disappear and the bird flys off
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MANK
May 27, 2015
Rahul, that brings to mind friedkin’s remake sorcerer as well – thats another underrated masterpiece
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Rahul
May 27, 2015
MANK, I am a big Friedkin fan , specially of his latest movie Killer Joe. I didn’t know about this remake though.
He is another director firing on all cylinders in the eighth decade of his life.
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bart
May 27, 2015
You pushed me into theatre halls on this and I do not regret. A new world (haven’t seen the previous ones) with exemplary action. It did make my two-wheeler feel like a war rig outside the theatre (alas against the mad mad traffic, which was at a max!) .
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MANK
May 27, 2015
Rahul, sorcerer had the misfortune of being released opposite the first star wars film and got killed because of that.it was lost for a long time until it was resurrected rently by a friedkin supervised restoration. Get the bluray. It looks really awesome on it. another friedkin film you may like is To live and die in LA.- an urban cop thriller,not as good as french connection,but still pretty good it has some really good car chases,
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brangan
May 27, 2015
If we’re getting into the 1970s, let’s not forget The Warriors. Possibly Walter Hill’s finest hour.
And from the 80s, did anyone mention Martin Brest? He had a great run too. I’m especially fond of Midnight Run, after which he made — inexplicably — the crappy Scent of a Woman, the crappier Meet Joe Black, and wrote his epitaph with Gigli.
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RT
May 28, 2015
I’m a fan of CGI – as long as it’s used appropriately. It doesn’t always have to be huge action sequences with lots of explosions. George Miller, as mentioned in a few earlier comments, made Babe which won the Oscar for best visual effects. One of the other movies nominated that year was Apollo 13. Without CGI, there would be no Gollum or Caesar.
I’m not hugely fond of the avengers movies (haven’t even seen the second one yet) but can’t really see the point of comparing them with something like the Raid movies. You can’t make a movie about Iron Man, Hulk and Thor without CGI. In the Marvel universe, the closest thing to the Raid movies would be Daredevil – the one-take fight scene at the end of episode 2 is as good as anything from Raid or Raid 2.
The avengers on the other hand can fly around and throw lightning and whatever that stuff is that Iron Man shoots from his hands and are as indestructible as Tom and Jerry. You can’t do justice to that concept without the liberal use of CGI. The problem with that movie was not the CGI but how it was used – generic CGI aliens instead of proper bad guys; the wholesale destruction of a number of buildings but no people being killed – it’s impossible to feel invested in any of that as it just looks like some stacks of concrete are falling down.
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Just Another Film Buff
May 28, 2015
Film culture, as a whole, needs to learn to negotiate the contradition between its vehement rejection of realistic, graphical violence and its fetishizing of realism in contained violence. .
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MANK
May 28, 2015
Brangan, shockingly scent of a woman is Brest’s only Oscar nomination for direction and picture. Meet joe black at least some good production design and a wonderful Anthony Hopkins performance, but gigli, god, as much as anybody would say that film viewing is a subjective experience, this is a film that everyone would universally acknowledge as horrible
Regarding Walter hill, don’t forget streets of fire which was pretty much copied scene by scene in to tezaab
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KayKay
May 28, 2015
RT, that’s a good point. I guess I was trying to point out the inherent “fakery” of CGI-infused scenes that rob it of any sense of peril you may feel for the characters. As a life long comics reader, I’m grateful that we’re at an age of CGI enhancement that makes the realization of Iron Man’s intelligent armour, Thor’s Mjolnir and Captain America’s shield come to vivid life. But the conflicts don’t generate any tension because everyone’s so damn invincible! But you’ve raised a valid point that that’s an inherent flaw in the writing and not necessarily the effects. After all, if Thor’s hammer can level mountains and all it does to the Hulk is stun him a bit, where’sthe tension? If Thor’s practically a God, how is it that his Hammer can be repulsed by both Stark’s armour and Cap’s shield, 2 very earth-based constructs? Incidentally, the brief fight scene between Black Widow and Hawkeye in the 1st Avengers had far more tension because you knew, boh these characters could bleed and be hurt.
So, it’s more an issue of an overdose of CGI coupled with a need to sanitise the scene of any genuine peril, keeping the censors happy so they dole out a PG-13 rating which brings in increased revenue. So the following would be more apt examples of CGI neutering an action scene of any genuine excitement:
Car Chase: Death Proof or Ronin vs any of the last 3 Fast & Furious flicks or the last 2 Transporter movies
Fights: Jet Li in Unleashed (AKA Danny The Dog) vs Jet Li in Romeo Must Die
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Venky
May 28, 2015
Did I just read how you dismissed “Scent of a Woman” as a crappy movie? I don’t remember much of the movie now. I am probably old. I have some old scented memories of Al Pacino raving about woman’s legs and passports to heaven. If I sat down with a cup of lemon grass tea, probably,I would be able to remember few lines – “You’re building a rat’s ship” and that thing about Integrity. Now that you’ve stirred some warm memories, what, if I may ask, has led you to pronounce this harsh judgement for this cute, cup-cake of a movie?
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aparna
May 28, 2015
I was wondering the same thing too. I’d really loved Al Pacino in the movie, especially that school court room Charlie- defense scene.
I’d liked Meet Joe Black too. Sigh. If they’re both crap, I guess I like watching crap.
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MANK
May 28, 2015
Venky, Aparna, sorry to butt in but why do you bother, if you like the film, then you like the film. why should brangans or anybody else’s opinion change that – and its not going to change the fact that you had a good time watching those films. And why should it make you feel inferior either just because brangan call the film crap. Thats just his pov .Isn’t all this subjective. May be those films connected with you emotionally the way it never did to him
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RT
May 29, 2015
Yes, the black widow hawkeye scene was a nice change from the other action scenes in that movie. And I agree wholeheartedly with the sanitisation of the violence for the pg-13 rating being the biggest issue for many action movies. I saw Fast and furious 6 and couldn’t understand why the franchise is so popular – it seemed like an exercise in trying to come up with more and more extraordinary car stunts in which nobody seems to get hurt. In Ronin, when there’s a car crash, the occupants of the car are at least shown to be seriously injured.
There needs to be a balance where the CGI enhances the action, but in a lot of movies, the CGI seems to be the whole point of the movie.
Unfortunately, with the kind of money the CGI-heavy movies make, there sometimes seems to be no incentive for the filmmakers to do anything differently.
I hope the success of movies like Fury Road will show filmmakers that CGI-lite action movies can also make 100s of millions at the box office. The Bond movies are another example with just enough CGI and also showing Bond as not invincible but getting hurt (although we know he’s not in too much danger as he’s never going to die).
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Mohit
May 29, 2015
BTW, since someone in one of the comments above mentioned easter eggs:
http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/features/articles/six-films-to-watch-before-you-take-on-mad-max-fury-road-30187
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Mohit
May 29, 2015
Oh btw BR, why didn’t you tell us there was a biopic on you already? 😉
http://imdb.com/title/tt3103410/
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Priyangu
June 1, 2015
@Mohit, I found signatures of a lots of older classics at many places, not just those six films mentioned in that link. By older classics, I mean both movies and other art forms like broadway musicals, opera, dance-drama, circus, comics, and stories. But on the overall, I found the movie to be a very classy “artistic” projection of a war story, with almost no blood and gore. I doubt if there will again be such a no-blood-and-gore super racy war action movie as artistic as this one before a real apocalypse, as BR rightly mentioned in the last line of his review. It is definitely not a “mass” movie like the upcoming Baahubali movie, the trailer of which itself speaks of copious violence and gore.
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aparna
June 12, 2015
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/mad-max-fury-road/stunt-doubles-married/
Some trivia I just read. The stunt doubles for Mad Max and Furiosa had a romance in the sets and got married.
btw, would never have seen this movie (the last but one day it went out of the theatres here) if it hadnt been for the review, comments and links underneath, which all put together made for a wonderful and more complete viewing experience.
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Shankar
June 14, 2015
Superb film, thoroughly enjoyed it. Baddy, I know you mentioned that you watched in 3D and enjoyed it immensely. I watched the regular version and loved the film but was almost thinking that if I had watched the 3D version, I may have gotten a little overwhelmed with the number of rigs that come crashing on to the viewer plus the grandness and tone of the film might be marginally affected by the darker contrast of watching in 3D. What a performance by Charlize Theron. She’s really transformed as an actress and is doing some great roles.
@KayKay, with the all the films you listed for non-CGI, I’d add my favorite Bourne series as well, the Matt Damon ones, which I’ve mentioned in the past too here. I love the action sequences in those films, though the scale is much smaller. I agree, there is a certain level of investment in non- CGI stunts.
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Prasad
July 1, 2015
IMO When you compare “Fury Road ” with post apocalyptic movies it doesn’t come as outstanding as the Alfonso Cuarón Terrific ” Children of Men “.
Or the inventive “Snowpiercer” which gave us a whole new throught of having a eco system in a High speed Trainn
I just felt both the above movies had right amount of action blended with humane content which we can relate to.
I agree Action scenes were good in Fury road but almost 2 hours it the same routine action of cars and jeeps chasing and nothing new and inventive in the action I thought.
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