Having only a vague cultural awareness of the Mad Max franchise and watched one trailer for this new iteration, I had very little knowledge in advance - all I really knew was that it was post-apocalyptic, Australian, and featured immense car chases - but I knew enough. What I wasn't prepared for was the brute force of the film's delivery, which is broken up into a series of vignettes that split the film into little discrete chapters, as if Wes Anderson survived nuclear holocaust. Our main players, Tom Hardy as "Mad" Max Rockatansky and Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa, are name checked before the the title - there are no further opening credits as we open on our first episode, where after an opening monologue from Max progresses to a car chase (naturally) and capture by a bunch of whitewashed nutters, leading to capture and a violent and juddering escape attempt, including hallucinations and a very literal cliffhanger.
The film carries on like this for its two hour runtime - anything approaching an explanation of what unfolds on screen isn't given by any of the characters until at least an hour in. You're forced to accept what happens through it happening, rather than having any set up to hold on to and try and reason your way round... And after a while it all makes sense. Of course there are insane car battles in an irradiated Australian outback following the downfall of society after nuclear war; how can there not be? Survivors have become gangs who have then become cults centred around definite territory - we only really meet one of these great cabals, the Warboys led by the main villain of the piece, Hugh Keays-Byrne's Immortan Joe, promising his followers entrance to Valhalla in exchange for their lives. It's easy to grasp, especially when we learn he has sole access to the water in "the Citadel" (the Warboy HQ). Over the course of the film, we meet the gangs from "Bullet Town" and "Gas Town"and their respective leaders (who may or may not be related to Joe?!), the biker gang and the Vuvalini, although we only learn their name during the credits. There's an air of hand waving going on here, almost as if George Miller just wants to get on with his film and let the audience catch up.
The rumours are true: it's a very woman-centric film. While Max is the eponymous protagonist, he's not the only one, and in fact he isn't the one driving the plot, or indeed the War Rig. That role falls on the shoulders of Theron's Furiosa, all woman and part prosthetic arm, hell-bent on rescuing Joe's 'breeders', the Five Wives, women imprisoned, chosen for their ability to bear healthy children and played by a gaggle of model actresses (actress models?), including that girl off the Victoria's Secret commercials and Elvis Presley's granddaughter. From their first appearance in the film as nominal damsels in distress, meeting them more formally moments later in a scene where they hose each other down and use bolt cutters to remove chastity belts, they undergo a kind of humanisation largely missing from the stoic Max, becoming a little gang of character archetypes in their own right, whereas Max becomes the 'token' man of the outfit. This rescue plot is already happening by the time Max becomes an asset in the film, after being strapped to the front of an insane car, being used as a mobile bloodbank for Nux, the Warboy with a heart of gold. Nux goes on a greater journey than Max, although Mad Nux doesn't quite have the same ring to it. The ultimate goal of Furiosa's escape attempt is to take the Five Wives to the "Green Place", an easy short cut to something better than the eternal desert that surrounds them. This plays out in a pretty unexpected way but proves the old adage "the world won't change, all it does is turn.". Furiosa's quest has a primal element, helping the women to escape biological slavery and find a safe haven, the utopian aspect blatantly obvious... Or perhaps they seek eutopia?
So! You're not here for the plot presumably, I know I certainly wasn't. Like I said at the top, this film is just insane. All of the crazy rigs are real, built from the ground up especially and some of the stuff is just mental. The War Rig that sits at the centre of the picture is probably the most normal looking out of the bunch (or is it just because we see it so much that we get used to it?), pretty standard Mack Truck... Except for the massive turbochargers and extended passenger cab, obviously. The big bad Immortan Joe starts out in something that looks like one Cadillac stuck on top of another with bubble canopies and exhaust out of a hot rod's dreams, then moves to a ridiculous monster truck wheeled car. There's an old Chevy chassis sat on top of tank treads, and countless other random genetic modifications on show. Incredibly, most of the action on screen is real, with a few standout moments of CGI here and there (sadly some of the flame plumes are the least believable effects). The scenes are crazy busy, yes, but it isn't messy. A lot of deaths occur out of shot, cut away deftly after wince-inducing crashes, explosions and sniper shots, all accentuated by the mad kineticism of Miller's direction, coupled with the ever-changing frame rate provided the jerky motion we see from time to time. Unlike say, anything by Zack Snyder, the use of chroma key filters and slow motion (or indeed fast motion in this film) is never too much.
The actual character of Max himself is... well, he's kind of a silent protagonist, or more likely a silent supporting character. Hardy's use of non-verbal, be that grunting or through his actions, rather than reliance on spoken exposition remind me of countless video game protagonists, The Legend of Zelda's Link in particular, giving the audience a blank slate for the other characters to reflect on. Although I haven't seen any of Mel Gibson's performances, this Max is particularly mad, what with his hallucinations and night terrors, juxtaposed with his expertise in combat and field medicine. Like a Silent Bob who survived the end of the world though, the effect of his short speeches are magnified by their rarity. Even a line as simple as "Max. That's my name.", delivered towards the very end of the film carries more weight than had he been yapping all through the film.
Go and see this film. Go and see how crazy it all gets. Go and be overwhelmed by the sheer force of it all. Go see men swing from 50 foot poles. Go see lethal sniper grannies. Go and sit, mystified by albino slapheads and mutant wildlife. This even shows potential for what a great Tank Girl movie could look like, given half a chance - if a film this weird can succeed then there's plenty of room for TG and Booga. The ending's all a little bit tidy: the outback is saved (for now), and everyone we like has survived (well, almost) - door's open for whatever comes next but there's not exactly any definite threads. The good guys are good, and the bad guys are bad - no real heavy intellectual lifting here. Go and see it and enjoy it, commit to being totally confused and weirded out. And remember: "One man, one bullet."
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