Mad Max: Fury Road Review (VOD) 

  2000 horsepower of nitro boosted war machine, Mad Max: Fury Road is a film in constant motion. After the short, barely intelligible opening monologue Max hops into his tricked out Interceptor and you're on a road trip for the rest of the movie. There's a few pit stops to stave away the numbness of your ass being perpetually rocked, but even those few and far between character/plot moments are filmed with a sense of urgency and intensity. If you want to see two hours magically disappear from your life press play and deal with the shock and awe later.

  Max Rockatansky is a mythical wanderer of the wasteland not unlike The Man With No Name, and the Mad Max films are essentially Westerns with flamethrowers and hot rods replacing horses and six shooters. The big difference here is The Wild West is a post-nuclear apocalypse, the origins of which is only loosely ever alluded to. The characters and civilizations that are struggling to exist in the harsh, desert wilderness are scraping by surviving on scraps of a long dead world. In Fury Road the citizens of The Citadel huddle in dirt mounds during the day to protect themselves from the brutal sun and radiation while Immortan Joe and his kingly, deformed family control all supplies of water and human breast milk, which he uses to trade for fuel and guns from neighboring settlements. He also has an army of irradiated, suicidal soldiers called Warboys at his beck and call, and a harem of breeding girls he keeps locked away in a vault.

  Max doesn't care about any of this. He just wants to survive and continue to wander, having been long since driven insane from losing his family and friends.  He roams aimlessly through hostile, seemingly endless wasteland until Joe destroys his ride and he's taken captive to be used as a literal bloodbag for his sickly Warboys. When Imperator Furiousa detours from a routine trade route driving Joe's war rig full of water and milk, it's soon discovered she's also hauling Joe's prized brides, smuggled like cramped cattle, in the cargo hold. Joe is understandably pissed and sends his war party after her, Max strung up to the front of a car like a hood ornament. Max gets free, and he's mad. He forms an uneasy truce with Furiousa, and the two of them are on the run from Joe for the remainder of the film.

  The “plot” and character development featured in the movie isn't lazily told through exposition or narration like a stage play. This is a brilliantly visual film, with every frame and intricately detailed costume lovingly placed and purposefully shot. There is no filler here; what happened to Furiousa's arm? Does it really matter? No, so don't expect an explanation because you won't get one. Fury Road is chaos captured on celluloid, and it's fucking beautiful. There's car crashes galore, explosions, and a dude in longjohns and a bandana covering his face strung up to a mobile wall of amps who's only purpose is to play guitar. There's no shitty shaky cams to ruin the action, no overuse of CGI, and no compromises seem to be made. This is a vision of love; someone's dream captured perfectly, impossibly on the screen.

  I saw this twice in the theater, and almost feel sorry for anyone who won't get that opportunity. Fury Road is spectacle and stimulation that is best experienced as largely and loudly as possible. That said, the VOD version is badass, too. The kinetic feeling translates incredibly well; the extended road trip and car-on-car combat evoke cross country traveling at the calmest, and naval warfare when the bombs and chainsaws start flying. A half dozen viewings later and I still get choked up at the unadulterated imagination and pure joy that has been created. It makes me so happy just knowing there are still original ideas left in this world and the talent and confidence exists to bring them to life.

  Mad Max: Fury Road is a masterpiece. There's no hyperbole or irony in that statement. It may not be a bold stance to take, either, with the film getting almost universal critical praise and dissenters in the public space being the minority, but it's worth evangelizing because it has to be seen by everyone. Quite frankly if you don't agree you live on a different taste planet as far as I'm concerned. This is an instant classic.