Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Alyla Browne, Tom Burke

Directed by George Miller

Warner Bros.

The life of Furiosa…

Mad Max has always been about myth and creation, destruction and legend. It sits in a liminal space where the words epic, unhinged, overwhelming and metaphorical sit together jostling for attention but none of them finding meaning without the others.

Sure, some of the films in the Mad Max cycle are terrible or have aged very badly but at the same time, they have this flavour to them of the canticle or the mythic saga wherein Gilgamesh and Beowulf would make for great drinking buddies.

All of which is to say Furiosa is manic, out of its mind, over the top, unrelenting story telling which focuses less on a coherent plot (although it just about scrapes one together) and more on feel, action and singular motivations to drive the story onwards.

It is undoubtedly epic and, absolutely earns its subtitle of ‘saga’.

When I first heard about it I wasn’t completely convinced I needed a prequel for 2015’s Mad Max Fury Road. That film did a fantastic job of reinventing Mad Max for the modern age – turning the focus away from a single man after revenge (per the original movie from 1979) or even the bizarre post apocalyptic circus acts that followed in 1981 and 1985).

Charlize Theron’s portrayal of an older Furiosa grounded the film and gave weight to the rest of the Carnivale unfolding around her. Both a part of it and set aside in ways we didn’t really understand but, as a result, provided a way in for the viewer.

Furiosa is true to the sensibility of Fury Road and is a deserved entry both into this saga but also in its own right. It takes Furiosa and finishes the job of making her the heart of the wasteland. Not simply the survivor among the chaos but the through line that makes sense of so much else we see in both these modern films.

There’s a huge amount that remains uncomfortable to watch – the violence is constant and brutal, the characters make uncompromising and nasty choices without any kind of hesitancy or regret. The sexual politics continues to provide a definite metaphor for male control over women’s bodies and shadows the debates that (utterly depressingly) continue to define much of US politics and is increasingly prevalent in the UK.

You can miss all this in the frenetic set pieces, the colourful makeup and costumes and the over the top characterisations but like the best satire, Furiosa is absolutely mocking the politics of nationalist right wing religious conservatives, social Darwinists and capitalists everywhere. As they fend off the poor, feed on gasoline and throw away the lives of those serving them to maintain their own status, it’s hard not to see this as two fingers up towards anyone who suggests that poor people deserve their lot in life and rich people are, somehow, deserving of their wealth.

Knowledge in Furiosa’s world is useful either as a circus act to create entertainment or in service to the killing of others as part of the subjugation of those who won’t willingly subject themselves to the control of a small number of rulers who, in this world, are the billionaires and politicians holing themselves up in bunkers at the end of all things.

One character even mentions to Furiosa to ‘make herself indispensable’ so she won’t be thrown away later.

Yet this is only a part of what the writer/director George Miller has accomplished here.

Unlike Fury Road, which is an exercise in grief as much as anything else, Furiosa is an exercise in keeping hope alive through anger, in keeping memories cherished through defiance.

Anger is an underrated emotion – most often relegated to the dustbin of emotional health and wellbeing when, really, it should be held onto as a motive force that’s essential to overturning injustice and integral to challenging power when it resists change.

Furiosa celebrates anger. Except it makes no real distinction between constructive and destructive anger (and I admit the differentiation is often impossible to truly define – that’s partly why so many refuse to contemplate any kind of anger as safe/healthy).

The catharsis of anger is on screen for almost the entire run time (post some picking of nectarines right at the beginning). As it should, this undermines the sense of anger delivering catharsis but it also underscores that anger often shapes us into the very thing we need to survive and effect change. It might be impossible for us to change back afterwards, but that might also be the point.

Anya Taylor-Joy is not the only Furiosa on screen. She is joined by Alyla Browne as young Furiosa and between them they handle a story that occurs over more than a decade. This is portrayed seamlessly and without anything that breaks immersion in the story. Both of them deliver incredible performances in the context of this film – holding it together and really giving it the chops to also have someone like Chris Hemsworth playing Dr Dementus without it teetering over into the laughable.

Furiosa’s challenge to disastrous forms of masculinity (very much second fiddle to disastrous forms of capitalism in this film) is clear every time Hemsworth is on screen next to Furiosa.

And to take a moment, Hemsworth plays Dementus brilliantly. Although Immortan Joe and his lackies are around for most of this film, it’s Hemsworth who gets to play the most and he delivers something that, if your only experience of him is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is going to surprise you.

The cinematography is harsh and sumptuous using its limited colour palette wisely and for maximum effect while the sound is crash bang wallop but without ever feeling discordant.

Verdict: Furiosa is a fist pummelling ride of a movie, an absurdist satire of capitalism and a brutal presentation of anger doing what anger does.

My only advice? Go see it on a big screen.

Rating? 9 witnesses out of 10

Stewart Hotston