George Miller’s Furiosa is a prequel to his acclaimed fourth Mad Max film, Fury Road. It tells the story of how Furiosa (portrayed by Charlize Theron in Fury Road and Anya Taylor-Joy here) found herself in the employ of the despotic leader of the Citadel, Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme, who is only slightly less menacing than Fury Road’s Hugh Keays-Byrne).
Beyond being one of those prequels that merely traces the line back to the start, Furiosa also spends much of its runtime fleshing out the world of the Mad Max Wasteland and the three tenuously symbiotic settlements that keep life there from snuffing out. The combination of these two threads – the personal story of Furiosa and the grander narrative of human survival – make for a film that weaves vengeance and history-making into an epic yarn.
As one character describes of Furiosa, there is “a purposeful savagery” to both the film and its world. Miller takes pains to make the Wasteland appear a shaggy, unpredictable place of mostly chaotic intent, yet the characters we find ourselves most concerned with are those who seek to build roads to prosperity (if only for themselves). They want to raise a church on the frontier, so to speak. Except the church is a town full of bullets, and the frontier is a desert traversed using motorcycle chariots as opposed to the traditional steed of the American western.
Miller also hones this element of controlled chaos into a similarly calculated sprawl of a story. With operatic overtones, Furiosa’s odyssey is separated into chapters that each feel grand sweeping and satisfyingly contained, while at the same time tracing Furiosa’s turbulent formative years leading toward a mission that goes “beyond vengeance.” Even the chapter containing the least narrative tissue – the utterly spellbinding third chapter, which is one intoxicating and perfectly crafted set piece – feels like it could have been the entire movie and that would have been a pleasant time at the cinema (in a superficial sense, it is what the entirety of Fury Road was).
Not to under state it, but the technical craft put into Furiosa is about as good as, and in most cases clearly superior to, anything you would have seen in an action film since Fury Road in 2015. Its seams are seamier than Fury Road, but the overall effect is effective if what you were asking from a Mad Max prequel was a heightened Roman Coliseum show of a movie. If you don’t go numb from the sensory spectacle of it all, it is a continuous visual delight.
The clearest sign of mediocre cinematography is the camera movement. Things get bleary and muddy real fast when someone doesn’t have their full grasp on the movement. Everything in Furiosa is crisp and tight as a drum, and the camera moves are some of the most arresting elements of Miller’s bombastic set pieces. The forward momentum of these set pieces is carried by a clear and meaningful visual geography of characters, vehicles, and pyrotechnic explosions. Miller’s is the sort of action filmmaking that compels one to look at the overwhelming glut of mediocre blockbuster cinema and think, there really is no excuse.
Furiosa doesn’t require a direct comparison to its predecessor. It stands on its own feet so sturdily that one doesn’t need to have seen Mad Max: Fury Road to settle into the wacky savagery that is the Wasteland (although, if you haven’t seen Fury Road, you should; it’s the best action movie of the 21st century). The one place where a side-by-side may be useful is in the pacing. Furiosa is paced extraordinarily well for a two-and-a-half-hour movie, but it pales in comparison to Fury Road, which leaves absolutely no fat on the bone. There are small stretches of Furiosa that could have benefited from some narrative expediency, particularly in Chapter Two.
This is a minor complaint of a film that is easily one of the most exciting of the year. Between this and I Saw the TV Glow, I’ve had quite a good time at the movie theater this week. If you haven’t, this may be the right time to consider investing in a bucket of popcorn (because the rest of what the summer has to offer might struggle to stack up).
Furiosa:A Mad Max Saga: A
As always, thanks for reading!
—Alex Brannan (Letterboxd, Facebook)
CineFiles Movie Reviews 