It is no
exaggeration to say that 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road is one of my favorite
action films of all time. It’s gritty, succinct, completely unhinged, and once
the pedal is put to the metal it never, ever lets up. With Fury Road’s
relentless, high-octane pace it is a bit incongruous that the long-awaited
follow up/prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga took its sweet time making it
to theaters, and once I finally got to watch it I was initially thrown for a
bit of a loop-- the latest film in George Miller’s post-apocalyptic Aussie saga
is considerably slower in a few segments than its predecessor. But once I got
past that initial speed bump what I discovered was a beautifully insane film
that, while not a classic like Fury Road, is still a whole lot of fun
for genre film fans.
Unlike Mad Max: Fury Road, which
takes place across a couple of days, Furiosa’s plot stretches on for
over a decade, and this wider time-frame causes some noticeable variations in
pace. The titular character that Charlize Theron originated in 2015 is here portrayed
by Alyla Browne as a child and Anya Taylor-Joy as an adult, and while Browne
does a fantastic job the story itself is kind of boring until things switch to
the Taylor-Joy era about forty minutes in. Despite bursts of action things
start off strangely lethargic, a fact that probably speaks more to the crazy velocity
of Fury Road than any flaw in Furiosa.
This relatively slow first half stays afloat
largely thanks to the presence of Chris Hemsworth, who gives an energetic and
impressive performance as the film’s villain Dementus (if you thought “Furiosa”
was the only unabashedly stupid name in the movie then you probably don’t know Mad
Max). Anya Taylor-Joy is wonderful to watch as well, but as her character
is much more moody and subdued it falls to Hemsworth to keep the slow parts
from becoming too dull. The taciturn nature of Furiosa’s character also makes
her a bit of enigma with not a lot of overt character development, but
ultimately we know what we need to know, and that’s enough.
When there is action in Furiosa (and
there is plenty of it, don’t you worry about that) it is just as stylish and
well-shot as what came before it, a smorgasbord of practical and creative
stunts that further underlines the filmmaking prowess of George Miller. True,
the biggest and most impressive of these scenes is very similar to what we saw
in Fury Road, but it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Furiosa is in an Odyssey that is like
the actual Odyssey in that there is a clear goal that is often beset by lengthy
distractions. It is big, it is simple, and it is loud—pretty much everything I
wanted from a prequel to one of the best action films of the twenty-first
century. If you like grit and you like crazy, you have to witness Furiosa.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is now
playing in theaters.
This review was first published in the
Keizertimes on May 31st, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.
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