Mad Max: Fury Road (Movie Review)

Brought to you by the writer and director of the Happy Feet movies and Babe: Pig in the City!!!

Oh, what a lovely, lovely day.

Mad Max: Fury Road

Director: George Miller

Produced by: Doug Mitchell, George Miller, P.J. Voeten

Written by: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nico Lathouris

Genre: Action

Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoe Kravitz, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton

Music by: Junkie XL

Plot: Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) is doing the two things he does best: Wandering the wasteland that is the Australian Outback after some catastrophic event, and slowly letting his mental instability and past regrets consume him.

“Oh god, I can’t believe I spent three movies as Mel Gibson.”

I had to take that shot. I just had to. I’ll be judged for it some day, but I don’t regret it.

During this adventure (Which I hear takes place between the events of The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome, but don’t quote me on that), Max comes across a group of loonies known as the War Boys, who, being loonies, capture and torture him. The War Boys are led by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also played Toecutter in the original Mad Max movie), a terrifying Beetlejuice-Bane hybrid who rules his territory thanks to the personality cult that he imposes on his people.

While in the custody of the War Boys, Max gets involved in a conflict with Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a badass warrior lady who has taken Joe’s “Breeder Wives” (Disturbing) with her in a giant truck, in a desperate attempt to get them to a better place. Caught between the two factions, Max is in for the most batshit insane ride of his life.

Raise your hand if you would have trusted a 70-year old man (Whose last project was Happy Feet 2) with a $150 million budget for a ultraviolent, batshit insane movie that includes scenes like, uh, this:

“Furious 7 can blow me.”- George Miller

In case you can’t see, that is, indeed, an actual scene from the movie that involves a man that looks like a Mutant from The Dark Knight Returns dressed in a red onesie playing a twin-necked electric guitar that is shooting fire.

So, everybody who raised their hands? Total liars.

Actually, I think that picture is a pretty good barometer of whether or not you’ll like this movie. If you’re the kind of person who thinks that combining Mutants, electric guitars, flamethrowers and giant, threatening vehicles are awesome, then you’re gonna have a great time.

And if you’re not? I couldn’t care less, you should still watch this movie. Mad Max: Fury Road is fucking amazing. The only movies that I’ve seen since I’ve started reviewing recent releases that I’ve loved more than Mad Max are Birdman and Whiplash, and even then, I’d have to think really hard about putting them above this glorious movie. I truly believe that this will go down in history as one of the classic, genre-defining action movies, and I also think that it’s definitely the best action movie of the decade so far. It is that fucking majestic.

Admittedly, this decade hasn’t exactly set the bar all that high. 

Credit for the awesomeness should probably be laid at the feet of George Miller, the aforementioned 70-year old director, who makes ageist jackasses like me look like total fools. Unlike other directors who return to their franchises after a long hiatus and succumb to the temptation of overdosing on CGI…

Unrelated George Lucas publicity photo.

… Miller wisely decided to use as little CGI as possible, relying mostly on as many practical effects as around $150 million will get you. The result is a veritable goddamned smorgasbord of unhinged vehicular carnage throughout the giant action scene that is this movie.

That last sentence wasn’t an exaggeration, by the way. Fury Road is essentially a two-hour long action scene with some (Very, very well done) dramatic scenes interspersed throughout. You would think that a setup like that would be extremely tedious .

And in most cases, you would be very, very right.

That is not the case with Fury Road. I never once grew tired of the relentless action. Why is that? Well, I’m not sure, but I’ll chalk it up to some combination of the skillful direction of George Miller, the terrific uses of practical effects, my own personal uncontrollable bloodlust, and the score from both Junkie XL and the freak with the guitar, who, awesomely enough, is actually incorporated into the score, to terrific effect.

Aside from being just a terrific score on its own, the music really contributes to an atmosphere of franticness when it calls for it. Believe me, nothing gets your heart pumping like a guiet score getting interrupted by guitars and drums pounding along at a relentless, breakneck pace.

An awesome action movie wouldn’t be awesome without some badass characters fucking shit up, though, and thankfully, Fury Road delivers awesomely on that front too. Tom Hardy is the supposed lead of the movie, replacing Mel Gibson as the titular character. He doesn’t say much, unsurprising, since Mad Max has never been the chattiest of protagonists, but his scowling, brooding, insane demeanor more than does the trick, selling the fact that he’s a goddamned badass who will tear your damned throat out if you so much as squint at him.

The fact that he has prior experience wearing face masks can’t hurt, either.

Nicholas Hoult is also terrific as a War Boy named Nux, who I’m not going to get into for fear of spoilers. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley does a good job of redeeming herself for Transformers: Dark of the Moon with a strong, badass performance here, while Hugh Keays-Byrne is suitably scary as Immortan Joe.

The real standout, though, is the arguable star of the movie, Charlize Theron, who absolutely KILLS it as Furiosa. The rest of this movie could have been total shit, and it still would have been awesome as a whole because of Charlize Theron.

And she pisses off sexists, so that’s awesome too.

Overall: Go see this movie. Just do it. You won’t regret it. Unless you’re epileptic, then maybe wait for the Blu-Ray release. I dunno, just watch the damn movie, alright?

Rating: 10/10

“When you stare into the abyss, Mad Max: Fury Road stares back at you.”- Nietzsche, or some shit.

John Wick (Movie Review)

Fun fact: Keanu Reeves once played Hamlet on stage. I’m not kidding. Look it up. Apparently He was pretty good!

Keanu Reeves is a Canadian treasure. I will fight anybody who says otherwise.

 John Wick

Directed by: Chad Stahelski and David Leitch

Produced by: Basil Iwanyk, Eva Longoria, David Leitch

Written by: Derek Kolstad

Genres: Action, Thriller

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Willem Dafoe, Dean Winters, Adrianne Palicki, Bridget Moynahan, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Andy the Dog

Music by: Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard

Plot: John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is seemingly an everyman who, sadly, is mourning the death of his wife (Bridget Moynahan), who has succumbed to a terminal illness. While moping around his house, he receives a surprise package from his wife from beyond the grave who had arranged to give him a puppy to cope with his loneliness. John and the puppy immediately hit it off, becoming the cutest movie couple in film history, outdoing Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone.

Awwwwww……

Unfortunately, while going on his daily routine of, uh, Driving donuts?!?! That’s……Pointless…..

Yeah, this movie doesn’t exactly display a whole bunch of logic, and this scene in particular probably could’ve been cut from the film to the benefit of the picture as a whole. Anyways, while driving around, he runs afoul of a group of hoodlums led by Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen).

Sure, I know Alfie Allen’s character is technically named Iosef Tarasov, but if you’re as big a Game of Thrones fan as I am, you can’t not see him as Theon Greyjoy. Especially this character. Don’t even try to tell me otherwise, he is Theon Greyjoy.

Reek and his shithead buddies follow John home, murder his puppy and steal his Mustang. What he doesn’t know, however is that John is known in the underworld as the deadliest hitman in New York City. And know that he’s got nothing to lose, he’s gunning for Tarasov, his dad, Viggo (Michael Nyqvist) and the rest of the Russian Mafia.

The Russian mob: Because the Sicilian mafia is overused, and a Mexican cartel may come off as racist.

The moviegoing community hasn’t seen all that much of Canadian “actor” Keanu Reeves since his appearance in the shit-tastic The Day the Earth Stood Still in 2008. Until his appearance in last year’s 47 Ronin, which we will not discuss ever, he had mostly just appeared in some small scale independent dramas that nobody saw. That’s a damn shame because I’m a big Keanu fan.

Yeah, I get that he’s not a good actor, technically speaking,but there’s something about him that’s so damn appealing. I’m not sure if it’s the fat that he still looks like a 25-year old, or the fact that he really looks like he’s trying to emote up there. And hey, it’s not like he isn’t capable of delivering at least a passable performance. here and then.

So, how does Keanu do as John Wick? Well, you know,  he does what he did in the Matrix: Be a blank slate, enabling the audience to comfortably insert themselves into the action, of which there is a crapload. He’s not about to set the Academy Awards on fire, but he does exactly what a B-movie action star should do. And when he does need to show some emotion, he doesn’t embarrass himself, and can be genuinely touching when he needs to be. Sure, it would’ve been nice to get an all-around better actor, but as comebacks go, you could do worse.

Much, much worse.

The New York City of the world of John Wick is definitely something to behold. It is apparently a mecca for hitmen who do various jobs for the different crime bosses, and who seem to live a life separate from the non-criminal elements of society. The cops don’t particularly care about the in-fighting between the different games, as long as they clean up their messes and leave civilians out of it (There’s a pretty funny interaction between Keanu and a policeman). Hell, the hitmen have an entire damn hotel, maintained by Lance Derrick and Ian McShane, reserved for themselves. These assassins use freaking gold coins as currency for chrissakes! It’s definitely highly illogical, but I don’t really care all that much. I love it when movies try to do world-building  like this movie does. It almost seems like a less-stylized and less extreme in general version of the world of Sin City.

That’s not to say it isn’t stylized or violent though, because it’s both of those things, especially the latter. Holy shit, does John Wick ever rack up a body count. The movie, admittedly, is a little slow for the first ten minutes or so, but the minute that Keanu Reeves starts kicking ass and taking names. Director Chad Stahelski was Keanu’s martial arts coordinator in the sci-fi epicness that was The Matrix, And he definitely brought his talent for making people look like unstoppable badasses to this movie. John Wick is up there with the other unstoppable badasses of film history in terms of sheer body count and pure…Uh…Badassery, I guess. You have not trouble believing that this guy wiped out all of the Russian mafia’s rivals. Seriously. The Punisher wishes he was as badass as John Wick.

Did this help or hinder Punisher’s street cred? I’m going back and forth on that.

 The other actors aside from Keanu were fine too. I especially liked Michael Nyqvist as the big baddie of the movie, although you can tell at times that he and Alfie Allen aren’t Russian when their Swedish and English accents, respectively, bleed through.

The only other real problem I had with the movie is the writing. There isn’t a whole lot of dialogue in this movie (Compared to, say, Sin City), but when it does show up, it is just plain silly. You see this dumb line?”

JOHN WICK: People keep asking if I’m back. Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back!!!

Clunky, cheesy and B-movie fodder, right? It’s not even close to being the most awkward line in the movie. That said, I kinda give the movie a pass on that front, because, well, I think that this movie is kind of a throwback to the action movies of the 80’s. Stupid, corny dialogue, sure, but man alive is it ever a good time.

Doesn’t mean that the movie gets a nine. Still a great ride, though.

Overall: A creative world, ultraviolence, silliness and Keanu Reeves. If you are a fan of any of those things, then drop whatever it is you’re doing now and get to your local movie theatre to watch John Wick. What are you gonna watch otherwise? Ouija?

8.0/10

If this makes more money than John Wick, anybody who made that happen will have a gruesomely violent chat with me.