Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - Movie Review

Critics Score - 8 of 10

General Audience Score - 8 of 10

George Miller is a director that has a pretty varied filmography, from doing several children’s films including the animated Happy Feet movies to adult dramas like Lorenzo’s Oil. But the genre he has leaned into the most throughout his long career has to be action and adventure, from which he has given us the Mad Max series, for which he’ll no doubt be most remembered. While the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road was undoubtedly his pinnacle achievement in the series, Miller continues the world building of the story he reignited with the new film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. I’ll refer to it as Furiosa for simplicity sake going forward. The film stars Anya-Taylor Joy reprising Charlize Theron’s Furiosa character from the 2015 film and Chris Hemsworth stars as the dull-witted yet still politically savvy antagonist, Dementus. This film, as was its predecessor, is impeccably well crafted, excels on a technical level in virtually every aspect and will surely get some Oscars attention next year. As I mentioned, the world building Miller puts on display is astonishing. For lovers of Fury Road, there is so much depth and dimension added to this story, it’s universe and characters, as it serves as almost an immediate prequel to the prior film. Where I experienced some disconnect with Furiosa was the feeling that I’d seen this all before. While the story engages and expands everything incredibly well, when you boil the film down you get most of the things you’ve already seen. Cool car races and crashes in the desert, albeit with some new variations. Now don’t let that statement deter you, this film is excellent, one of the best so far this year. But while many are claiming this film surpassed the original, I simply cannot get on board with that. For the Fury Road enthusiasts and cinephiles everywhere, this film is a nearly perfect addition. For general audiences who might have enjoyed any of the other Mad Max Saga films as nice action movies, Furiosa may simply stand out as one of the better ones.

SYNOPSIS - As the film opens and some of the credits start to appear, we catch a sound collage of different news reports. Snippets of audio pieces like “911, what’s your emergency?”, kick things off, followed with others like, “currency has collapsed”, “cities are burning” and “catastrophic heat” fill our ears with the news sounds of a world falling apart. “Mankind has gone rogue, terrorizing itself”, is the last statement we hear before the resounding score blazes into our ears and the title smashes itself onto the screen. Our first image we see is of an old man covered in tattoos, holding a staff, standing in a blue desert night, he turns and looks at the camera while we hear more voiceover, “As the world falls around us, how must we brave it's cruelties?”. The man disappears and the first chapter appears, 1. The Pole Of Inaccessibility. A camera shot of the earth from high above quickly descends, we see Australia, the camera continues its downward trajectory into the middle of the desert outback, until we see a small snakelike body of water surrounded by lush greenery. As we approach it suddenly the scene cuts and we’re with a young Furiosa (Alyla Browne), dressed in a dark blue tunic, as she picks a peach or possibly nectarine from a tree and puts it in her pouch. Another young girl with her says nervously while looking around, “We should go back now, we’ve come too far”, as Furiosa reaches up to grab another brightly colored piece of fruit. As she snatches it off the branch, she looks back behind her to see a group of men with motorcycles gathered on the hillside behind them. Furiosa has her friend stay put while she goes in for a closer look. As she approaches, we see the men are gathered around something, I presume it’s an animal, but they are chopping and hacking away while gorging themselves on the flesh of it

After producing a knife from her pocket, Furiosa cuts the gas line to one of the motorcycle/glorified dirt bikes the men have arrived on and works her way closer to the group of masked individuals. But before she can cut another line, someone grabs her by the back of the head, she turns and a man wearing a helmet with padlocks and parts of a skull over the mouth is standing over her. She jabs the knife into his leg and bolts away, taking a high pitched whistle out and blowing it. We’re transported to a colony of blue tunic wearing people, they have a settlement complete with buildings and a wind farm. Mary (Charlee Fraser) is sharpening a machete on a grindstone when the noise from the whistle reaches her ears, she stops and slowly raises her head to listen closer. Furiosa climbs a rock wall trying to escape the group of masked ruffians but one of them whips her back down to the ground. She blows the whistle again before she’s knocked unconscious. We watch Mary immediately jump on a horse with another woman and ride to her rescue as a siren wails in the distance of the settlement. The invading riders make out into the desert with Furiosa while the women on horseback chase them down in a beautiful tracking shot up a sand dune. They shoot a rider with a rifle and capture his motorcycle, as Mary quickly prepares to continue the chase, the other woman puts all her bullets into Mary’s pouch and she speaks in a foreign tongue, “None must live to tell of this place, not one.” Mary continues to pick off the riders one by one with her rifle as day turns into night, then into day again. But at long last the final rider arrives at the camp of the massive motorcycle gang leader, teddy bear wearing Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), with his prize of Furiosa. But along with Furiosa, his arrival with the knowledge of a “place of abundance”, containing ample food and water, is vastly more interesting. This introductory backstory runs well past the twenty minute mark before the captured Furiosa (Anya-Taylor Joy) grows up and finds herself eventually bartered to Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones), the main antagonist from Fury Road. But for this prequel, Dementus and Furiosa spiral towards each other for the remainder of the film in a blaze of gas guzzling, bullet ripping, machine crashing, metal pulverizing, explosion of a film that will surely leave you breathless.

George Miller has become something of a directorial wizard. While he previous Mad Max films from the late 1970’s and 80’s are cool movie/cult classic style films, maybe akin to something like the og Tron or The Dark Crystal from the same era, they never quite reached the popularity of films like The Terminator or Back To The Future. But with Miller’s latest additions to this Mad Max universe, whatever it is, his access to bigger studio budgets or his experience in having already crafted three other films in this world, his last two entries are nothing short of unprecedented masterclasses in action filmmaking. They are a revolutionary accomplishment in action set pieces. I mean, when you watch some of these sequences, from a production design perspective, it’s difficult to wrap your mind around the craft involved at such an extremely high level and how you’re watching what you’re watching. The thought, “I don’t know how I’m seeing this right now, but somehow George Miller made it possible”, is a regular occurrence. Miller also produced and co-wrote the scripts for the films, his vision, story progression, character and world building in both films are near flawless. While the cinematography in Furiosa is gorgeous, this film is incredibly well shot, but I definitely noticed a slight step down in the visuals from Fury Road. I felt Fury had more contrasting scenes than just desert after desert after desert sequence, to offer more lush visuals and a better variety in it’s overall color palette. The original score by Tom Holkenborg is some excellent work, with screeching, grinding and blaring/roaring noises fitting like a hand in a glove with the car chases and vehicle smashing set pieces. But I cannot leave this review without mentioning the standouts on the acting side. First I will praise Chris Hemsworth, this may very well be the most impressive work he’s ever put on the screen, it’s definitely among his best performances. But Anya-Taylor Joy must also be praised for her embodiment of the Furiosa character, she does the iconic character justice that the great Charlize Theron brought to life almost a decade ago now. All in all, nobody was asking for a 2015 update to the Mad Max franchise, or even a prequel to the 2015 film here in the year 2024, but Miller gave them to us anyway, and boy oh boy are we thankful he did.

SUMMARY - While Furiosa does not reach the heights of Fury Road, at least in my mind, there is no denying the excellence of this world building and story telling that is present in this filmmaking. Cinephiles rejoice! Now, thanks to Miller, the Mad Max Saga, and probably to a lesser extent the name Furiosa, will now live alongside films like The Terminator and Back To The Future in infamy.