movie review: Mad Max: Fury Road

my impressions from the preview were right

I'd seen previews to the recent Mad Max movie, and hadn't been impressed with what I'd seen. Then the movie came out, and I saw good things being said and written about it, so I decided to take the risk, and see it.

Overall, I think my impressions from the previews was closer to the mark, at least in my opinion.

I can say that a lot of effort was made to make it interesting and entertaining. The movie is basically a long car chase set in two parts, with lots of strange-looking vehicles, lots of strange-looking people, a main bad guy who looked like a Predator gone to seed, and rather more eye candy than I was comfortable with. Perhaps one big reason I didn't like was all this strangeness, or grotesqueness.

But for all of the action, the explosions, the flame-throwing guitar, the porcupine-line cars, the biker gang of old ladies, I found the whole thing rather boring. Even the budding romance between the rogue warboy and the runaway wife only added a small bit of heart to the dystopian road trip.

We knew who the bad guys were because they were bloated and deformed. We knew who the good girls were because they were young and beautiful. I will give some props to Hardy as he plays Max as an atypical movie hero, someone who came rather closing to living up the word "mad".

But the closest the movie comes to having a heart is when one of the bad guys laments the death of his unborn brother.

In the end, I was glad when this movie was over, and have no plans to see it again.