Mad Max : Fury Road

Note: Originally written in May 2015

Of late, it has become very difficult to resist the assumption that Hollywood and the English flick circles have lost the plot to the enjoyable action flick. This one, thankfully, negates that difficulty by a good margin. But of course, there is a lot of old school culture behind the making of this flick. The man at its helm, George Miller, crafted all the original Mad Max movies almost 30 years ago. And then, there's all the talk about extensive use of stunts personnel in the making as opposed to CGI. What you get, as a culmination of it all, is a couple of hours of edge of the seat thriller which also happens to be a great visual and aural fest. Dazzled is the word that comes to mind as I reminisce the crucial scenes from the flick; the cinematography is visceral in both the massive vistas and close-cut action shots. There is no shaky handycam for starters and then, there are those moments that make the viewer want to be in the middle of a desert just to witness the awe of its expanse. Then, there is the soundtrack which marries silence and sounds in a scale quite comparable to the visuals on screen. It all seems a tad bit mindless, despite undertones of social critique. But the narrative unabashedly assumes a position of throwing spectacle after spectacle at the viewer. Whatever time or focus the viewer has left, Charlize Theron steals it with her ravishing exuberance. 

Catch more on the flick at IMDB and Letterboxd.