This review contains minor spoilers Is it too much to ask for viscerality in action? Mad Max: Fury Road , the 2015 epic helmed by George Miller after 15 years of constant production headaches, answered this question with a resounding and confident “no.” It’s a consummate film of high-octane, four-wheeled pursuits and purposeful stunts that felt all too real — because, for the most part, they were. In Kyle Buchanan’s Blood, Sweat & Chrome , a recounting of the nearly two-decade production of Fury Road , he quotes Steven Soderbergh saying: “I don’t understand how they’re not still shooting that film, and I don’t understand how hundreds of people aren’t dead.
” It was a miracle that the eventual six-time Academy Award-winning film got made, and in my opinion, it remains the best the 21st century has to offer in action. Though, the problem with the film industry is that progress is not a linear line. Trends can come out of nowhere and can create new and undisciplined practices.
And if a film that took so long to make created pain and anguish that only the Namib Desert can remember, then it’s very likely that the magic of Fury Road can never be recaptured again. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga attempts at doing so. Does it succeed? Well, yes and no.
Without a doubt, George Miller is still at his A-game. There is a marked difference between the seismic nature of his filmmaking and the industry’s uninspired flatness of late. He remains true to the rough-and-tumble r.
