Armageddon out of here!

FILM ... with Don Gordon-Brown

 

Mad Max: Fury Road (MA)

Director: George Miller
Stars: Tom Hardy, Charize Thieron, that kid from About a Boy who grew up, some Aussies.
Rating: 3/5
Now blowing eardrums everywhere.

It’s absolutely vital that a film critic approaches a new release with an open mind. And as I sat waiting for the lights to fade and Mad Max: Fury Road to begin, my mind was open to the notion that it would most likely be shit.

I wasn’t disappointed. But please keep reading: just because this flick was not my cup of tea doesn’t mean it’s not high-class film-making that’s going to blow the gasket of action-junkie revheads everywhere. It is. And the grinding, sand-dune jumping war machine action sequences pump enough adrenalin to permanently alter one’s heartbeat and enough noise to damage their hearing. It just doesn’t do much for a two-and-a-half star, rom-com half full sort of guy.

After a 30 year absence, George Miller’s fourth installment once again settles on Mr Max Rockatansky’s lonely-guy heroics to save what’s left of a post-apocalyptic world.
While there’s a short narrative at the film’s start to explain all this, some idiots were still talking right behind me, acting as if there was no storyline worth bothering about and they were only there for the chase and battle scenes. While they were spot on, I had been keen to know why things were so darned, well, apocalyptic.
I’m not sure I got a complete handle on this but Mad Max Four is clearly set in Australia, where all semblance of societal cohesion has broken down, presumably after the totally unexpected re-election of the Abbott government. I knew it was set in Oz because I’d read all sorts of pre-release spiel about how quintessentially Australian this flick is, right down to the African setting – it was shot on Namibia after outback Oz got washed out – the overseas lead actors, the presence of Megan Gale and of course all the vehicles being left-hand drive.
Anyway, there’s three main warring groups - those who have bullets to sell, those who have gasoline to sell, and those who control the Aldi stores you never see but must be in the hollows of the countless sand dunes on show otherwise there’s no way these people could possibly survive otherwise.
Then there’s this sheila who looks fairly armless, Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron, who escapes from the Citadel or Paradise or Waterfall Park or some such thing, taking with her all these sexy girls wearing next to nothing over their chastity belts whom she’s released from the harem of one of these warlords.
Mad Max is strapped to the front of one of the chasing vehicles – his blood is being used to fuel the vehicle: I told you it doesn’t pay to dwell on what passes for a storyline for too long – wearing for much of the show the facial expression he no doubt had when first told by his agent that he had the gig because Gerald Butler had been unable to step in for Christopher Bale who caught a bad cold the first day into shooting after replacing Brendan Fraser, who decided at the last minute this wasn’t the vehicle to try to restart his career.
That’s just about it really.
You know how those old bikini beach movies where Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello used to shout "surf’s up!" as soon as the storyline began to lag?
 

In much the same way, George Miller resorts to an extended road rage/battle sequence whenever the narrative in Mad Max Let’s Hope Four Is it! gets bogged down, and that’s just after the curtains open. It’s why the show’s first such sequence, where Mr Rockatansky is captured in the first place for his bloodlines, comes before the minimalist opening credits.

To be fair to George, while the action sequences are totally unbelievable to the extent that our heroes could not possibly and repeatedly get out of the messes they’re in – and we all appreciate that’s just the way of action movies – they do look real, something Peter Jackson was unable to match in his Lord of the Rings flicks, where action and battle sequences looked and sounded about as real as Tony Abbott’s smile and laugh.
There are also moments of humour in Mad Max: Fury Road even if unintentionally. The mushy dialogue between the leads used to separate the action sequences should raise a smile, while Furiosa putting her back to a wheel to help unbog a 30-tonne war rig is worth a full guffaw.
And children, it might be okay for Max to wander off into the darkness armed only with a can of gas – sorry, petrol seeing this is an Aussie film – to take on a heavily armed mobile enemy, but you should not try this at home. Max may be mad but you will be killed.
A final word of warning to all you ladies out there who might accompany their menfolk to this testosterone-ladden epic.
It is, as stated earlier, very, very loud and sleep during the feature will be fitful at most.