ABOVE: Watch Rosey Edeh and John R. Kennedy of Global Toronto’s News at Noon talk about Mad Max: Fury Road and watch Rosey’s interview with director George Miller and actor Nicholas Hoult.
TORONTO — Mad Max: Fury Road has opened 36 years after the original Mad Max debuted in cinemas and 30 years since the third chapter, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
George Miller, who created the first three movies, returns to direct Fury Road — and Hugh Keays-Byrne (Toecutter from the original Mad Max) shows up as tyrant Immortan Joe. But the rest of the cast is new, including Tom Hardy in the titular role originated by Mel Gibson.
The post-apocalyptic action flick also stars Nicholas Hoult as War Boy Nux and Charlize Theron as the saviour of Joe’s wives (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoe Kravitz, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton).
Can Mad Max: Fury Road blow away fans of the franchise and a new generation of movie-goers at the same time? Here’s a look at some of the reviews.
“Fury Road is everything fans could have hoped for,” declared Angela Watercutter of Wired.
“Fury Road is not only a reminder of what big, beautiful action movies can and should look like, it’s a reminder that they can have a point. That spectacle can have substance.”
Watercutter asked: “Are you looking for the Citizen Kane of cars-that-go-boom movies? Fury Road is for you. But would you rather see a shrewd meditation on the psychology of despotism and how the disenfranchised can ignore other subjugated people when they’re just trying to survive? Fury Road is still for you.”
At the Mirror, David Edwards was less blown away by Fury Road. He complained that the movie “is being hailed as one of the best action films ever made, with adjectives being wheeled out that haven’t been since Orson Welles made Citizen Kane.
“Once the dust has settled, however, Fury Road is likely to be remembered as a visually spectacular but somewhat boring chase film.”
Calling it “big and … bombastic,” Edwards suggested there isn’t much under the hood.
“Boiling it down, this is a film where the characters spend 90 per cent of the time chasing or being chased this way and that,” he wrote. “It all becomes a bit tedious.”
BELOW: Watch the trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road
Charlie Jane Anders at io9.com disagreed.
“You don’t realize just how crappy most action movies are, until you see something like Mad Max: Fury Road — a movie in which there are no ‘action scenes’ because the action pretty much never stops. And the film’s constant sense of violent motion is in the service of incredible imagery and transcendant moments.”
Anders likened Fury Road to a rock concert “where you hold up your lighter until you burn your fingertips and you scream yourself hoarse and afterwards you feel like you’ve had a personal, beautiful mindf**k.”
She added: “The over-the-top, stylized, absurdist aesthetic is pushed to its limit (and a lot of the film’s dialogue is frankly ridiculous), but the ultimate result is so extreme, and married to such beautiful imagery, that it becomes a great work of art.”
The rock metaphor also shows up in Chris Knight’s review for Postmedia.
“The movie feels like an Iron Maiden album cover come to life, but it’s not nearly as quiet,” he wrote. “Imagine two Norwegian Death Metal bands putting on an amateur production of West Side Story in a kettle drum warehouse during a hailstorm and you’ll get a sense of the volume and sustain.”
Knight described Fury Road as “a two-hour car chase” with “a simple, satisfying story.”
READ MORE: What the critics are saying about other recent movies
At Polygon, Arthur Gies said Fury Road “is often cacophonous in its engine roar and explosive, well, fury. It is loud, and intense.”
The chaos, he wrote, is beautifully orchestrated.
“George Miller has captured some of the most incredible practical stuntwork I’ve ever seen,” opined Gies.
“It’s an intense, violent movie, but Fury Road never feels gratuitous with the gore, instead trading blood and dismemberment for a wrenching sense of impact as bodies are thrown against or from the vehicles that dominate the proceedings.”
Gies concluded Fury Road was “made to knock everything else on its ass.”
CBC reviewer Eli Glasner agreed Fury Road will “leave other summer spectacle choking on its dust.”
He called the movie “a visual delight, filled with a dazzling array of attack sequences, battles between bikes, trucks, flame-spouting dune buggies and deadly pole dancers, trained by members of Cirque de Soleil.”
BELOW: Watch what happened at a downtown Toronto street corner as Mad Max: Fury Road rolled into the city.
In The Washington Post, Michael O’Sullivan declared Fury Road is “a pulse-pounding pleasure” that “barely taps the brakes.”
He wrote: “Whether you are thrown from the vehicle depends entirely on you. Some viewers will never be able to hang on through the story’s careening disregard for sense, logic or moderation. I advise them not to even try. But if you know whose car you’re getting in — it helps to have seen at least one of Miller’s three previous Mad Max films, but it is not required — you’re in for one heck of a ride.
“Go ahead and guffaw. If you’re not capable of appreciating the humour in any of this, including the at times over-the-top violence, you’re in the wrong theatre.”
Sam Philip assured Top Gear fans will love the ride.
“Do you like cars? Do you like car chases? Good. Because Mad Max: Fury Road is, in essence, a two-hour car chase with a movie loosely attached,” he wrote.
“Dialogue? Not so much. Plot? Minimal. Rat-rodded, spike-covered cars, smashing into each other and exploding? Check, check and check.”
Philip added: “It’s utterly relentless and utterly bonkers, gleeful in its over-the-top-ness.”
Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter found Fury Road to be a “madly entertaining” film that “energetically kicks more ass, as well as all other parts of the anatomy, than any film ever made by a 70-year-old — and does so far more skillfully than those turned out by most young turks half his age.”
But, opined Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly, “when you get past Miller’s orgy of loco action sequences—and they’re so good, you may not need to—the story is pretty thin.”
He wrote: “What made the first Mad Max such a future-shock classic wasn’t just its jittery, overcranked action served up with a sick smile, but also its metaphorical depth. The new film is, I’m sorry to say, just another summer action film (albeit a gorgeously shot one).
“In the end, Mad Max’s road may be furious, but it doesn’t really lead anywhere.”
According to Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News, the road is worth exploring.
“Strap in, load up and hang on because Mad Max: Fury Road is a freaky, ballsy, phenomenal ride,” he wrote.
“This thick-skinned (but not heartless) reboot of an action-cinema milestone makes most Hollywood vehicles look like they’re stuck in third gear.”
Neumaier noted there is more than explosive action to see.
“The story’s theme of undaunted hope in the midst of appalling inhumanity makes it the rare summer event flick that has its brain stuck right next to its gas pedal.”
In The New York Times, A.O. Scott made a similar observation, commenting that the movie “doesn’t traffic in the kind of half-jokey, half-sentimental self-consciousness that characterizes so much franchise entertainment these days.”
Describing the movie as a “rocket-fueled romper-stomper,” Peter Travers of Rolling Stone commended Miller for hurling a “brutal and brilliant cinematic fireball” at audiences.
“Does this ride down Fury Road always make sense? Not really. So what? Just go with it,” he wrote.
Travers credited Theron as the movie’s “bruised heart and soul.”
He wrote: “Mad Max: Fury Road kicked my ass hard. It’ll kick yours. So get prepped for a new action classic. You won’t know what hit you.”
BELOW: Watch director George Miller and actor Nicholas Hoult talk to Liem Vu of Global’s The Morning Show.
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