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Director: George Miller

Writers: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris

Runtime: 120 min

Main Cast:

• Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky
• Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa
• Nicholas Hoult as Nux
• Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe
• Zoë Kravitz as Toast the Knowing
• Rosie Hunting-Whiteley as The Splendid Angharad

Guest Review: by Erika T

I’d been looking forward to this one. I’m a Tom Hardy fan and most of the time he signs on for some pretty good stuff!

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Though he’s survived this dystopian society on his own, Mad Max (played by Tom Hardy) is captured.  Taken prisoner by a bunch that is about as uncivilized as it gets, he manages to escape their clutches through a massive car chase. He reluctantly teams up with Furiosa (played by Charlize Theron), a fugitive of this society, and her group as they try to escape this crazy group and their savage leader.

What I Liked:

Where to start? If you go into this wanting a good action movie, then you’re in for a great action movie! Very rarely does a film engage me to the point of where I don’t want to look away from the screen for a second out of fear that I’d miss something.  This was one of them.  There were so many really cool sequences packed into its two hour run time.

The world building was fantastic and from an artistic standpoint it’s pretty amazing too.  The visuals stay with you long after the movie is done.  It helped enhance the action sequences, which were creative and interesting all on their own.  I want the blu ray just to see the behind the scenes features to see how they made it.  I’m a dork, but I’m usually not that dorky so that says a lot about this film.

Tom Hardy did well, but this was Charlize Theron’s movie.  I have never been a huge fan of hers (I’m usually neutral) but this is probably my favorite role for her. She was so empowered and badass while being sympathetic at the same time.

I also liked that while this is a post-apocalyptic world, the colors remain vivid and bright. It doesn’t have that blue tint that often accompanies films like this.

What I Didn’t Like:

The storyline is fairly shallow and I didn’t find the themes very deep.  The characters, while fun,  were underdeveloped though their story managed to rope me in anyway and I felt invested in their success.  A film of this caliber usually goes beyond two hours and I think if they spent an additional 15-20 providing more backstory for the main characters to flesh them out more, it would have improved my overall impression of them.

I wouldn’t say I disliked this, but I noticed that while there are disturbing themes and the action is unforgiving to its casualties, it wasn’t as gory as I was expecting.  There were a lot of cutaways even though the tone of the film still commands an R-rating.

Also, I would have liked more sets.  Almost the entire film is this car chase.  I normally get bored when that happens in film, but this one managed to do a good job of remaining engaging anyway.

You can find more of Erika’s work at Your Urban Fantasy

Images Courtesy of IMDB