Mad Max: Fury Road

I don't understand why this movie isn't in my blog. I saw it in the theater when it first came out and have seen it several times since, but I can't find the post anywhere.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a 2015 award-winning post-apocalyptic action film starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron, the latest in a series that began back in 1979. I've enjoyed them all and enjoyed this one. You can jump in now. Please don't feel like you must see the others first. Of course if you have seen the others, so much the better.

trailer:

Rolling Stone gives it 3.5 out of 4 stars, calls it "breathtaking" and says, "get prepped for a new action classic. You won’t know what hit you." BFI calls it "a hammer-down, cast-iron-plated, diesel-exhaust-belching manifesto on the physics of screen action". Slant Magazine gives it 3.5 out of 4 stars. Vanity Fair says it "thrills like something we’ve never seen before."

The Atlantic concludes, " Mad Max: Fury Road is that rarest of indulgences, a blockbuster-season release that fully delivers on its promise. This is vital action filmmaking, a wash of sensation almost primal in its intensity and utterly devoid of the mopey self-seriousness that is so much in vogue these days. May you stay mad forever, Max." Slate has a positive review and closes by saying, "it’s impossible not to appreciate the septuagenarian Miller’s boundless energy and investment in a film franchise that’s older by a few decades than many of its most enthusiastic audience members are likely to be."

SlashFilm says,

One word captures Miller’s action staging: clarity. Fury Road has some of the clearest action direction I’ve seen in any film. There’s never a point in where I was at a loss for where characters were, what they were moving toward, and how the many intersecting paths lead to important collisions. Major and minor characters are tracked through the constantly-moving chaos, and Miller, cinematographer John Seale, and editor Margaret Sixel juggle them all without dropping a single one.

Variety says,

“Mad Max: Fury Road” never feels even remotely cynical — or exploitative. There’s nothing but tenderness in the fiercely protective manner with which Furiosa and the five wives regard one another, or in the key supporting role of Nux (a wonderful Nicholas Hoult), an eagerly aggressive young war boy whose dramatic shift in perspective takes the story in an unexpectedly poignant, and romantic, direction. As for Max himself, he remains a thin, tenuous figure at best — less a fleshed-out character than an avatar of revenge and survival — which is precisely what has made him such a durably iconic creation over the years.

Roger Ebert's site gives it 4 out of 4 stars and closes with this:

“Mad Max: Fury Road” is an action film about redemption and revolution. ... “Fury Road” would be remarkable enough as a pure technical accomplishment —a film that laughs in the face of blockbuster CGI orgies with some of the best editing and sound design the genre has ever seen— and yet Miller reaches for something greater than technical prowess.

Empire Online gives it 5 out of 5 stars and says, "Imagine a movie where Tom Hardy is the point of calm. Max’s re-enfranchisement is a triumph of barking-mad imagination, jaw-dropping action, crackpot humour, and acting in the face of a hurricane." Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus of 97%.