By Peter Sheehan
This Australian-American production is the fourth film in the Mad Max adventure series. The series began with Mad Max (1979), and this film follows on from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985). Mad Max’s world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and the film’s action takes place in a world that shows the aftermath of terrible events.
The setting for the movie has moved from outback Australia to the sand dunes of the Namib desert in southwest Africa in an attempt to capture complete environmental desolation.
Mel Gibson considered returning to the key role of Mad Max but eventually declined, after starring in each of the three preceding movies. This movie is a total change of pace for the film’s director (George Miller) from Happy Feet in 2006, and it has been 15 years in the making.
The film tells a characteristic story. Some years after catastrophic calamity, ex-patrolman Mad Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), a character who features in each film in the series, wanders across a vast desert looking for some resolution to the tragedies that have befallen him. Captured and strapped to a warrior-war machine, he comes into contact with a woman, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who is trying to cross the desert with five former female captives of the dictator, Immortant Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne).
The women have been the concubines of Immortant Joe and his cruel gang of men, and they are trying to run away. Enraged by the escape of its women, the gang pursues them. The women are vital to the continuation of the human race and, after a furious fight between Furiosa and Mad Max, Max joins forces with them to help them escape.
The film is full of intense scenes of violence and multiple images where people fight to the death, crazed to do whatever they can to survive in a totally arid environment. The film draws very heavily upon action visuals, and it contains very little dialogue. It gives scant recognition to its expression of the values of “hope”, “redemption”, and “finding our better selves”.
Character development occurs mostly through the action, and not through the dialogue. As a result, the impact of the movie is carried by stunts, and elaborate set designs which communicate the ferocity and intensity of the action.
Especially noteworthy are the bizarreness of Immortant Joe’s “Citadel”, and the grotesque makeup of the characters who get involved in the action. Cars smash into each other regularly, and the choreography of it all is amazing. One action piece, for instance, has people swinging in the air from giant poles attached to specially constructed battle-cars that ram into each other constantly at ferocious speeds. In another sequence, Max and Furiosa, together with the group of escaping women, are pursued by Immortant Joe and his psychotic henchmen while one of the assailants plays rock music on a guitar that shoots out flames. While the battle rages on, Max washes blood off his face with mother’s milk, Immortant Joe orders the caesarian of a dead concubine, and a romance manages to blossom between a young war-lord and an escaping concubine in the backseat of a war-machine travelling at full speed.
Furiosa has a prosthetic arm and shaven head, and is a tough, action heroine who matches Mad Max in the level of his aggression and ruthless determination to survive, but any role-model potential for a strong female character like Furiosa is lost by her behaving entirely in a male aggressive way.
For both Furiosa and Mad Max, and others in the movie, humanity matters very little. Mad Max seeks peace of mind following the death of his wife and child in the preceding chaos, but too much aggression happens for a lot of humanity to cross his path.
The movie is one continuous, violent chase sequence that is relentless. There seems to be more stunt work in this movie than two or three Marvel superhero movies put together. Though the movie’s physicality is awe-inspiring, the action spectacle comes at a price. The scripting of the movie has difficulty in supporting dramatically the intensity of the action; and character development needs much more dialogue than it receives.
As an action piece, the movie will vastly entertain those who go to films searching for an energy high. Its stunts are unbelievable, and all take place without the help of computer graphics. As a movie for die-hard action fans, it takes previous Mad Max movies to a new level of energy that will be hard to beat, and two sequels to this film are already being planned. Its impact, however, comes almost entirely from the spectacle of escalating visual action that is accompanied by never-ending violence.
Peter Sheehan is an associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting – Courtesy Australian Catholic Bishops Conference