I did, in fact, get out to see the new Mad Max movie! And, OK. It is, first and foremost, a ridiculous, violent action movie. If you're not OK with ridiculous, violent action movies, you're not going to enjoy it. But it is a really well-done example of the kind of thing it is, in some genuinely surprising ways. Ones that were still genuinely surprising to me even after having heard people talking about them all over the internet.
Yes, it is basically a two-hour car chase. I would really, really expect that to get dull pretty quickly, but instead it just gets more and more exciting as it goes along. And the character stuff... Well, in most action movies, let's face it, what you get for characterization is mostly cliche, or lip service being paid to the idea that stories are supposed to have character development. But this one creates surprisingly well-realized characters with an absolute bare minimum of dialog, and the emotional moments are genuinely affecting. I'm honestly not sure how they did that, but it's impressive. And, yes, the reviews are all right: this is a movie that does well by its women. In fact... It feels, in a very subtle and hard-to-pin down way, as if it's a movie made for me, just as much as it is for the men in the audience. I think that may be the first time that has ever happened with this kind of gonzo blood-and-explosions action movie. And it could be that's just an illusion, based on preconceptions I had about it going in. But I think not entirely? And that's... a bit mind-blowing. But nice.
So, that's now three movies in three days that I've actually really enjoyed, and that have fully kept my attention the whole way through. (The first, of course, was Interstellar. The second was Big Hero 6, which I watched on DVD yesterday, and thought was pleasant and fun.) If this continues, I may have to take back all that stuff I said a while back about how movies in general no longer seem to entertain me the way that TV shows do. Although, sadly, I suspect this may just be something of a lucky streak.
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Fury Road really does a whole lot of things right, not least of all being a terrifically gonzo action movie. It's like the other Mad Max movies hopped up on steroids -- beautifully and skillfully shot, incredibly inventive, but also with a compelling message and surprisingly well realized characters.That it does all this, that it makes its real hero a handicapped woman trying to rescue other women from a life as property, maybe shouldn't be phenomenal, but it is.
ReplyDeleteAnd I still haven't seen Interstellar, but I kind of loved Big Hero 6. It's just so ridiculously sweet.
Fury Road is pretty astonishing, not least because the more I think about it, it more substance it seems to have, which is the exact opposite of most action movies.
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