Tom Hardy avoids the George Lazenby effect. (Although I hasten to add that it doesn't ascend to the top tier occupied by the likes of Avatar and Gravity.) It's also refreshing to experience 3-D where it's more of a benefit than a cash-grab. The emphasis on practical (old school) special effects over computer generated imagery adds a grittiness to the chases and fights that many films (like the aforementioned Fast and Furious entries) lack. The day scenes are bright and colorful, with lots of reds and oranges and the nights are bathed in blue, making everything almost black-and-white. Certainly, this is one of the best looking mainstream films to come along in a while. #Mad max fury road characters movie#It's legitimate to question who/what the real star of the movie is: Hardy's Mad Max or Miller's Mad, Magnificent Visuals. The odds would cause most men to quail but Rockatansky isn't called "Mad Max" for nothing. The warlord, however, is unwilling to let the potential mothers of his children go and mounts a massive manhunt to kill Max and Furiosa and bring back the women. #Mad max fury road characters free#Joined by "war boy" Nux (Nicholas Hoult), they seek to free the women from captivity and deliver them to a green land to the east. The storyline is straightforward: Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), a loner haunted by the deaths of his wife and daughter (events told in the first Mad Max movie, released in 1979), joins forces with Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) to defy a warlord (Hugh Keays-Byrne) by stealing his five wives: Splendid (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), Toast (Zoe Kravitz), Capable (Riley Keough), The Dag (Abbey Lee), and Fragile (Courtney Eaton). And, when freedom comes only from long distance transportation, gasoline is a close second. When all the world's a desert, water becomes a precious commodity. The movie transpires in the same blasted, Omega Man-style future where Mad Max, The Road Warrior, and Beyond Thunderdome took place. Too often when special effects rule the screen, this doesn't happen. As is always the case in an action movie, things work because we care about what happens to the protagonist. Miller spends just enough time on their background and interaction to breathe life into what easily could have been (as in Bay's films) cardboard cut-outs. However, despite all the action, excitement, and mayhem, the characters come across as well defined. The post-apocalyptic setting is the test tube in which adrenaline and testosterone combine into an explosive cocktail. Constructed as an almost-two hour chase sequence (with only a 15-minute cooling-down period about halfway through), Fury Road combines the pyrotechnics of a Michael Bay extravaganza with the physics-defying razzle dazzle of a Fast and Furious outing. When we consider summer action films, this is what we think of. One can make a compelling argument that the movie may have been helped by the long delay - not only did it allow a younger man (with less baggage) to take over the lead but it gave Miller more time to refine the "spectacle" aspect which, in the final analysis, is by far Fury Road's biggest selling point. During the hiatus, he tried numerous times to get the project started but issues related to Mel Gibson's rise (and later fall) as Hollywood's biggest star and problems with finding a location kept the picture on the shelf after several mis-starts. The three decade gap between Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road was more a product of circumstances than a lack of effort on Miller's part. Talk about taking things to a new level… Theaters showing Fury Road should have seat belts installed. George Miller uses a new cast and a sizeable budget to deliver the Mad Max film he always wanted to make but was never quite able to. Part reboot, part sequel, and part something entirely different, Fury Road takes us on a trip that is both like and unlike the earlier excursions. 30 years after last appearing on the big screen, Max roars back with a vengeance. There's no clearer or more succinct way to put it.
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