"Furiosa" Arrives

The best thing that I can say about "Furiosa," which the marketing people insist on calling "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," is that it doesn't feel so much like a prequel to "Mad Max: Fury Road" as much as the missing first two acts to a larger story that encompasses them both.  This is the first "Mad Max" film that breaks from the "Man With No Name" template to tell the origin story of Furiosa (Alyla Browne as a child, Anya Taylor-Joy as an adult), the fierce Imperator who became Max's ally in "Fury Road."  Her history is relayed in five chapters, from her initial capture as a child from her hidden oasis home, to her imprisonment under the Biker Horde leader Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), to her first encounters with the warlord Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and his best driver, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke).

We're thrust back into the motor-oil drenched, post-apocalyptic Wasteland, where an endless variety of mutated freaks, motorized menaces, and beefy dudes on epic power trips hold sway.  Fans of "Fury Road" will be happy to find many familiar faces, and several action scenes that rival anything that George Miller has ever dreamed up.  The "Stowaway" chapter has what may be the best road chase in the entire franchise, and there's a later sniper sequence that escalates to glorious proportions.  However, the experience is fundamentally different from "Fury Road," because "Furiosa" is a very different kind of story than any of the other "Mad Max" films.  This is a tale of revenge and self-discovery that spans many years.  The action scenes are much more intermittent, and the story of Furiosa is harrowing stuff, with a lot of upsetting material.  The first hour of the film revolves around the child Furiosa being thrown into more and more dangerous situations, and witnessing very R-rated atrocities.  This is not exactly a crowd-pleaser, and I'm not surprised that it wasn't the Memorial Day box office winner the studio was hoping for.  

However, for those viewers who enjoy their post-apocalyptic media, like "The Last of Us" or "Fallout," George Miller's "Mad Max" is one of the original pillars of the genre, and delivers here like nothing else.  We learn more about the Wasteland and the workings of various gangs continually fighting for dominance.  The stylized language and allusions to antiquity help to give the story an epic quality, with the sweeping cinematography and larger-than-life performances to match.  The film charts the rise of Furiosa at the same time it charts the downfall of Dementus, a cheerfully insane fellow who decides to go up against Immortan Joe in several clashes over many years.  He's the most prominent new addition to this universe, and Chris Hemsworth keeps him oddly likable in spite of all the terrible things that he does.  Hemsworth is trying a little too hard to be memorable, but which works for his character anyway.  Tom Burke is more effortlessly charismatic as Praetorian Jack - a sort of proto-Mad Max figure who has an instantly memorable screen presence.  

There are several actors of a similar quality in "Furiosa," playing characters who have ridiculous names or no names at all, but command your attention nonetheless.  I want to point out Carlee Fraser as Furiosa's mother, Josh Helman and Nathan Jones as Immortan Joe's sons, and John Howard (not the former Prime Minister of Australia) as the People Eater.  And of course, there's Furiosa herself.  Anya Taylor-Joy and Alyla Browne don't have many lines between them, but they're so compelling to watch as they try to navigate and survive this insane desert nightmare world.  Taylor-Joy has several scenes where all you can really see of her is her huge eyes, and she does so much with them, it's fantastic.  And Furiosa does get a full, rich character arc here, where she has to consider her path forward, which of her many male role models she wants to take after, and setting up her appearance in "Fury Road," which it's almost impossible not to want to watch immediately after "Furiosa."     

  

I'm sad that we're probably not going to get the next planned "Mad Max" film "The Wasteland," but getting "Furiosa" as such an uncompromised vision was so unlikely that I'm not inclined to be too sore about it. 

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