Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Watched 5/29/24 (theater)

It’s a great day when something this finely calibrated to deliver unhinged mayhem is thrown into a movie theater with the most daring sound imaginable and the most crazed action photography one can possibly fathom. A 45-year-old franchise evolving opposed to servicing fans is unfortunately such a unique proposition that perhaps Furiosa hyperbolizes itself as awesome by being so singularly focused on maximalist entertainment and so care-free about “a continued story,” but at the end of the day this movie and its storied Aussie mastermind, George Miller, on the merits of their unquestionably successful overall mission to blow the roof off the place with this Mad Max Saga, get away with many imperfections that other movies and writer/directors would not.

It’s a testament to how fantastic the spectacle of the second 90 minutes of Furiosa are that large aspects of the opening hour are so take-it-or-leave-it. From the jump we follow a young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) and see the fabled, if not fully convincing effects-wise, Green Place referenced time after time in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. Furiosa is quickly taken from her home, her family, and her friends. And while this is a necessary setup, it lacks the tightly-executed action brainstorming that later amounts to such high peaks.

Furiosa’s capture is answered by her mother giving chase. It’s not a particularly exciting rundown, given too much screentime for what little sniper shots and straightforward, small-scale motorcycle smashing we get to see. The strange special effects and iffy CG make early appearances in many of the shots here, and without Anya Taylor-Joy’s upcoming screen presence or the furious chaos of later nuts-and-bolts action hooks, the visual slack in this early go is a bit harder to overlook. It doesn’t help that some of the acting in this opening section struggles to escape awkward line deliveries on top of the somewhat lackluster set piecing. It’s a tough task to credibly deliver Miller’s janky post-apocalyptic dialogue, and not every actor at the beginning of the film is up to the task.

Then, enter Dementus, played by a lovably psychotic Chris Hemsworth in all of his glory. Hemsworth getting to break bad after all those years stuck in the leading hero mold is a welcome zag that injects the movie with a much-needed first shot of excitement. Dementus quickly establishes himself as the film’s number one villain, mercilessly taking from Furiosa time after time while never breaking away from the character’s overpowering personality of a wacky carny with a penchant for entertaining the crowd in front of him.

With Dementus’ arrival come the first seeds of world-building, a staggeringly impressive achievement that acts as a through-line of brilliance even as the beginning of the film struggles to always maintain momentum. The dizzying heights of Miller’s imagination and Dementus as its tour guide make for an enthralling trip into the wasteland. And, amidst it all, there is necessary character work in this first hour as well, giving us good clean motivation and establishment of Furiosa’s toughness that do pay off wholeheartedly in the rest of the film. The first hour focuses almost entirely on the characters of Dementus and Young Furiosa and, while the pacing and action can feel a bit unpolished, the next act is anything but.

After that first sixty minutes or so, we make a time-jump to Anya Taylor-Joy’s version of Furiosa, and this is where the movie shoots up a large helping of steroids. Without spoiling too much, we are quickly treated in this second act to one of, if not, the best truck convoy scenes in any movie ever made, with weapons and gadgets and shot selections so delightfully novel, it would be a disservice to spoil them in a review. It’s enough to put similar sequences in films like Sicario: Day of the Soldado and Sorcerer to shame, if that gets you excited without giving too much away. George Miller lets it all out of Pandora’s Box as we watch Furiosa and eventual ally Praetorian Jack (played by surprise standout Tom Burke) kick high-octane ass for 20+ straight minutes. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Burke (of unfortunately little Mank fame…he’s great, if solely an impressionist, in that one) and Taylor-Joy team up for the next stretch of the film, with George Miller’s breathtaking, percussive direction during this next sequence of events moving mountains to make us care about these two action junkies. As kinetically gripping and well-staged as this section of the film is, it would not work nearly as well if Taylor-Joy, Burke, and a resurfacing Hemsworth weren’t acting so credibly and MIller wasn’t shooting and editing their interactions as intelligently as he does. A reason to latch onto the characters is something I was sorely missing in Fury Road, but here, even amidst amazing violence and some jarringly mid-tier CG, it’s always easy to come back to focusing on how fully-realized the three main characters feel. Furiosa wants her vengeance, Jack will do anything to help her, Dementus will do anything to stop them. It’s a simple setup that is directed and acted to high heaven by Miller and his well-cast stars.

The final third of the movie cements Charlize Theron as the second-best Furiosa in the opinion of this author; we watch as Taylor-Joy’s prequel version dominates the screen with a bone-crunching desperation that just wasn’t quite as deeply felt in Fury Road’s one-big-race plot. The scope extension of this story and its world gives Taylor-Joy so many awfully-believable, increasingly-insane chances to show off just how ferocious she can be.

While the plot doesn’t at the end of the day feature much more than your standard Mad Max ‘79 revenge mechanism and some other, blended greatest hits from the next three films, the action pedigree and world-building accompanying it are the de-facto reasons to see Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. It would truly feel blasphemous to spoil the details, but let’s just say there are many, many times in this film that you will see things that you have never seen before. Audiences should expect to come out of the film with a multitude of images and action beats burned into their memory for the foreseeable future as only George Miller and a handful of other visionaries can do it. The full-budgeted originality and creativity here from the 79-year-old Mad Max godfather is a sight to see. Especially in light of the very likely possibility that he may not ever get a chance again to do this much with such a deep well of thought and ingenuity.

It will be a shame if we never get another one of these, but if Furiosa is the last, despite its faults, it’s a pretty darn amazing mixture of immersive stunts, painterly world assembly, and a trio of well-balanced acting performances. This Mad Max Saga will almost certainly stand out over the years as a beautifully concussive culmination of a director’s talents and impulses in near-full lock-step with each other. It’s a real joy here; they’re mutually exclusive for so many other creatives.

9.25/10