Seeing Mad Max: Fury road seem so long ago now – despite the screening being just yesterday evening. Perhaps because I was lounging in an Everyman Cinema on Baker Street with a Cosmopolitan in hand (the best kind of cinema is the kind with cocktails). I was so comfortable I could have fallen asleep, but this is the moment the trailers rolled and Mad Max began. From one corker of an establishing shot, I was practically lobbed into Max’s survival mode world and the car-chase-long film that is Fury Road. And that is essentially what it is, which ironically is one of the reasons it is so great.
What makes a film so great, what makes a film worthy of a five star rating is always one or both of the following reasons:
- It is classed as unmissable
- Something above and beyond a series of moving pictures
Number 1 usually covers award hype films (Whiplash, 12 Years a Slave), Disney greats (Frozen, Big Hero 6), and cult classics (check the IMDb top 250 for around 250 examples). These are films that will surround you for months whether you like it or not – I’m talking Let it Go, constant photos of J. K. Simmons staring into your soul with award in hand or just massive promotion for it. Number 2 applies, in my books, to Cloud Atlas, to Blade Runner, to Mad Max: Fury Road. These films earned their stars because it is more than just what is on screen, more than the gorgeous soundtrack, it’s even more than how it makes me feel.
A five star rating of this kind is about sheer ambition – the glorious creativity and imagination that secures films place in the art world where it belongs. Occasionally it is a film that’s ahead of it’s time; it is so creatively huge that no-one saw it coming (Blade Runner, again).
Every film is a labour of love – years of work and production, so whether we call it good or bad, it all started as an idea in someone’s head. So regardless of whether we’re talking of the iconic Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the abysmal Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it is still miraculous that what started as a thought can make it through the creative process to be shown on a big screen.
Occasionally however, we get such films that come along and take everyone by surprise , confusing audiences and making them reconsider their personal taste in film. Both my friends and I turned to call Fury Road the best action film we’d ever seen. This is the beauty of it all – I have yet to see the Fast and Furious franchise, or Sin City, or even other Mad Max films and it’s been a long time since I have been persuaded to see an action film in the cinema – or enjoy one this much. Yet here I am, writing a five star review for a violence-filled, rock and roll scored, Tom Hardy starring action film with car chases and scantily clad women. Miracles do happen, folks.
Watching this film, I was in jaw-half-open-awe of how incredibly ambitious this film was, and I couldn’t help but think, marvelling at its beauty, how over-the-moon the teams behind Fury Road must be. It succeeded expectation and possibility. Now that I’ve temporarily stopped gushing about how much I love good films (I could write a book, honestly), let’s talk more Mad Max…
The absolutely glorious soundtrack is one to be bought immediately and listen to as you do really un-glorious things like brush your teeth or fall out of bed (if you’re that prepared, that is). The cinematography is just fantastic, and things like the colour, or the realism of the completely unreal dessert and post-apocalyptic culture ruled by creepy-as-anything ‘Immortan Joe’ are just jaw-dropping. I had reservations about seeing the film, fearing a mindless action film with a lot of death but I was not right in holding such reservations. I was right about the death but I mean, it has the words ‘mad’ and ‘fury’ in the title – they advertised the film as madness so of course there was going to be loads of deaths. Small victories, eh? But the film itself s worth watching regardless of your chosen genre persuasion and really was a mouth-open at the credits, wanting to clap sort of film.
Practically flawless, visually stunning, the editing was seamless and there were no useless shots or any wasted dialogue – everything was carefully thought out and designed to create a thoroughly enjoyable, and thrilling action film proving the team behind it to have the imagination of a couple of children who believe in dinosaurs and unicorns, and this is by no means a bad thing.
I had no idea how they could make a 2 hour car chase interesting but they sure as hell did. Gripping and intensely good, (and in case you hadn’t already guessed from the hints) Mad Max: Fury Road gets a solid FIVE STARS.
talk movie to me 