Friday 15 May 2015

REVIEW: MAD MAX-FURY ROAD

4/5

The Max and the Furious.

120 Minutes. Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Zoe Kravitz, Rosie Huntington-Whitely & Hugh Keays-Byrne. Director: George Miller.

Madness?! This.Is.Max! Move aside Mel! Someone harder's come along to take mad to its maximum. Hardy to be exact! The future belongs to this man. Just when you thought Tom was done the breakout 'Bronson' and inspired 'Inception' star is working his hardest. About to own more franchises than downtown coffee retailers despite having such an overblown workload 'The Dark Knight Rises' star was forced to drop out of forthcoming superhero films 'X-Men: Apocalypse' and the D.C. Comics 'Suicide Squad' ensemble assemble. Still that hasn't stopped the man that's about to show the Kemp brothers he can play BOTH Kray twins in expressing his desire to play Marvel's Punisher, or fans expressing there's to see him take the claws of Wolverine that are about to be handed down by the seemingly as irreplaceable as Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark's 'Iron Man', Hugh Jackman. Now which one sounds more perfect? Maybe everything else didn't work out for a reason. Still all this Marvel may even have to wait their turn behind sequels that have already been green lit for a film that's getting maximum ratings across the board. That's just how mad this all is and how great Hardy is in place of the legend Mel Gibson as Max fuelling this formidable, fire franchise and taking it down a road 'Beyond Thunderdome'. Starting out in a Bane like mask and ending up with 'Lawless' method acting mumbling. He's a directors dream, even if it is a nightmare to ask him for directions. Understand it or not, this guy says more with a perfectly crafted facial expression-whether funny or forlorn-than in lines of chatter that this film could write on napkins and coasters. The shy anti-hero shtick is quite endearing too for an actor whose previous character courted Chastain with little conversation. Now this 'action, bomb louder than words, 'Warrior' is at it again with 'Drive' dialogue disdain.

This time is Charlize. As Theron shows there's more to this max pain than the madness of Tom's thumb trigger happy action hero. The veteran of femme fatale, action heroine, big budget flicks herself has barely been better than here, shaving her head and strapping on a 'Winter Soldier' metal arm and looking just as good, she's just as important as Furosia an alley to our road warrior Mad Max on his 'Fury Road' that leaves you battered and bruised like the tank confides of Brad Pitt's formidable war of 'Fury'. Last year the seriously good actress shows she could have a laugh with Seth MacFarlane in 'A Million Ways To Die In The West', but here drawing even more guns she proves she's ass kicking-ly back. Rubbing oil across her face and motoring a war rig of runaway young, forced into marriage brides, this is 'Thelma & Louise' with a testosterone and steroid fuel injection. There's even more riding shotgun however as 'X-Men' star Nicholas Hoult delivers a beast of a performance as a skinny and ashy War Boy, shaved and halfway in a grave if it wasn't for the 'Warm Bodies' stars Max blood donor. What more can we say about this boy? Hoult proves he's a man and worth so much more as he increases his range on this trip. Showing there's more than one fork in the road on this epic car chase in a film that lives, dies and lives again. All in all its one hell of a ride. What a lovely day indeed.

Trunk loads of character and acting action give this death race of vehicular manslaughter more throttle. Jason Statham's lady Rosie Huntington-Whitely transforms from her 'Dark Side Of The Moon' performance to a real actress, who alongside guitar god daughter Zoe Kravitz at her best yet brings the emotional current to this core of cogs and cranks and bullets and brimstone motors. Even original villain Hugh Keays-Byrne returns badder than ever, along with this films origins director George Miller whose spent the last couple of his post-apocalyptic decades directing the likes of 'Babe' and 'Happy Feet'! What the?! Now you might find those pigs and penguins on the front grills of these cars in carnage or even barbequed for sustenance later. Because this film of swines has no feathers or cuteness about it. It kicks your ass for the best part of two hours taking you through storms of sands and beautifully barren 'Book Of Eli' like deserted landscapes. Clutch shifting through stuttering, stop shuttering like filming that makes this amazing assault of the senses as action addict nourishing as it is motion sickness nauseating. Even the taking over genre of video games don't play quite like this. The wolf can wait...even if he does eventually join The Avengers like Spider-Man, because in this Marvel 'Age Of Ultron', this fantastic film of a driving daredevil makes the competition look like ants man. In another monster and machine Summer season of 'Jurassic' past and 'Terminator' future franchises this war machine is the extinction level event, brilliant, blockbuster surprise of the year like lasts 'Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes'. As crazy as a bag of monkeys this insane film stays in your membrane, proving that Aussies rule once again even without Gibson. Just think those poor 'Pitch Perfect' girls have to go against this. Those pitches be tripping, because even in a blockbuster year that the Diesel of Vin started early, here's one road war that could even run the crushing, candy, cereal cars of the 'Fast' franchise off the road. Because this machine madness is taking it to the max, with much more furious fire. TIM DAVID HARVEY.

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