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  • Endlessly inventive and full of drive, Mad Max: Fury Road bursts on to the big screen

  • in a hail of fire, blood, and sand that’s impossible to tear your eyes away from at

  • any point during its two-hour run time.

  • Fury Road may be part of director George Miller’s iconic dystopian action series that first

  • hit cinemas back in 1979, but don’t worry if you haven’t seen the previous Mad Max

  • movies as this one is very much a standalone story, so you can understand and enjoy it

  • without any prior knowledge. Still, if you have seen the earlier films,

  • youll likely take pleasure spotting the many call-backs, some subtle, some more obvious,

  • to the first three movies in the franchise.

  • Fury Road’s action scenes are not only jaw-dropping in terms of the sheer volume and range of

  • practical stunts hurtling across the screen at any given time, but theyre also insanely

  • and madly beautiful. Pretty much from the start, relentlessly-paced

  • wall-to-wall action reigns supreme. Cars, trucks, motorbikes, weapons, and human

  • beings all collide along a strangely bewitching yet barren landscape.

  • Expect to be entranced by a crazily choreographed ballet of vehicles that thunder, crash, and

  • explode their way across the wasteland in scenes expertly cut together by editor Margaret

  • Sixel. And just wait till you see the shedload of

  • bizarrely inventive automobiles that vehicle and production designers Peter Pound and Colin

  • Gibson have come up with! They are beyond belief!

  • Oh, and just as good as the scenes of motoring action are the hand-to-hand fight scenes,

  • which really are no-holds barred, visceral affairs.

  • Props must go to second unit director and stunt co-ordinator Guy Norris and his stunt

  • team for their amazing work on the film.

  • Director George Miller and his co-writers Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris have created

  • an intriguing cast of characters. And the varied and eccentric histories of

  • those characters as much in their appearancetheir scars, tattoos, costumes and so

  • onas in what they say. Which is a good job as, in Fury Road, dialogue

  • is kept to a need-to-say basis as this is very much a world where actions speak louder

  • than words. Stepping into the boots of original Mad Max

  • Mel Gibson, Tom Hardy brings the post-apocalyptic haunted hero back to brilliant big-screen

  • life. Hardy’s Max is wiry and agile but physically

  • imposing, and I liked how he managed to convey so much with so few words, slyly underplaying

  • the character and throwing a dash of archness into the mix.

  • Female warrior Furiosa mirrors the character of Mad Max in many ways, and Charlize Theron

  • puts in a blistering performance in the role, which has shades of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley

  • from the Alien movies about it. And with his peroxide-blond hair, powdered

  • white face, nightmare mask, and Plexiglas armor, Hugh Keays-Byrne cuts a terrifyingly

  • striking figure as the Warlord, Immortan Joe, the movie’s big bad.

  • By the way, you probably won’t recognise him because of the way he’s made up in Fury

  • Road, but Keays-Byrne actually played gang leader Toecutter in the original Mad Max movie.

  • Nicholas Hoult puts in a superbly entertaining performance as Nux, one of Immortan Joe’s

  • War Boys whove guzzled down their leader’s self-serving lies.

  • And as played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoe Kravitz, Abbey Lee, and

  • Courtney Eaton, each of Joe’s Five Wives has their own sense of individuality and otherworldly

  • strangeness.

  • Director George Miller has created a visually spectacular world that’s brimming with a

  • breath-taking level of detail and that’s also full of cunningly deranged humour.

  • There are touches of Terry Gilliam about Fury Road mixed with John Ford’s Stagecoach,

  • and a hint of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, especially in the character of Nux.

  • John Seale’s cinematography is simply stunningfrom hyper-saturated daytime scenes to

  • deliberately overexposed scenes at night, this movie really is a work of art.

  • Plus, Jenny Beavan’s costumes, Colin Gibson’s production design, and Lisa Thompson’s set

  • decoration are all top-notch and contribute greatly to the film’s richly realised world.

  • Fury Road is the kind of movie that, once it’s finished, will make you turn to the

  • person next to you and ask in disbelief, ‘holy shit, did that actually just happen?’

  • And it’s definitely the kind of film youll want to see more than once.

  • So, to sum up: Mad Max: Fury Road is bat-shit crazy, insanely-inspired movie-making at its

  • best. Expect a wildly intense post-apocalyptic trip

  • that gets you in its vice-like grip at the very beginning and doesn’t let go till the

  • bitter end. Mad Max: Fury Road gets 5 out of 5 Flicks.

  • What do you think of Mad Max: Fury Road? And if youve seen the other Mad Max movies,

  • which is you favourite and why? Plus, what other apocalyptic feature films

  • do you enjoy? Let me know in the comments below!

  • If you like this video, please do share it hit the thumbs-up button & subscribe for my

  • movie reviews and interviews! Thanks for watching and see ya next time.

  • Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!

Endlessly inventive and full of drive, Mad Max: Fury Road bursts on to the big screen

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