Fury Road: A Symphony of Fire and Blood

Max Rockatansky, the ostensible protagonist of George Miller’s glorious symphony of fire and blood, Mad Max: Fury Road, has exactly 52 lines of dialogue throughout the film.

That is by design because while Fury Road’s sparse words have weight to them, it is ultimately all about the action.

Relentlessly paced and marvelously executed, Fury Road is the grand culmination of Miller’s single-minded vision — an action extraordinaire for the ages.

Many of you are acquainted with the ‘Show, don’t tell’ storytelling adage. Fury Road takes this convention of both efficient and visual storytelling to the extreme.

The movie is in perpetual motion, and aside from the sensational action, it is also a masterclass in visual storytelling.

Nothing is ‘told’ to the audience — there are no exposition dumps, no long monologues and the occasional break between set-pieces is inhabited with the sparsest of exchanges.

But Miller shows us everything. He trusts his audience to suss out the essential plot points from the predominantly visual narrative.

And those visuals convey a rich, complex story that touches upon themes of feminism, ecological degradation, hope, redemption and even religion.

It’s all there; one just has to pay attention.

Which is easier said than done because when Fury Road is not conveying pages worth of backstory and motivations through a few frames, it is assaulting all the senses of its audience through its raw and visceral action set-pieces.

The action in Fury Road is awe-worthy. The execution of the set pieces is applause-worthy.

The frankly sensational camerawork that preserves a sense of spatial awareness through the anarchy is exemplary.

The reliance on practical effects, reinforced by the sporadic use of CGI is commendable.

Honestly, everything about the action in Fury Road is just unbelievable. The movie is operating at a level that every large-scale action film aspires to be, but so exceedingly few scale such heady heights.

Then there are the principal characters, who are both searching for something in the Wasteland.

Imperator Furiosa, the true protagonist of this tale, is searching for home and hope. A barely human and taciturn as ever Max is searching for a modicum of redemption.

Neither of them truly finds what they are looking for, because the Wasteland doesn’t deal in hope and redemption, it only deals in fire and blood.

But by the end of the journey, Furiousa discovers that home isn’t a place, it’s a people and that hope can flourish anywhere if enough people believe in it.

And Max reclaims some of his humanity.

What Mad Max: Fury Road is able to achieve in its frenetic 120 minutes is nothing short of extraordinary. George Miller and company approach the absolute apex of action filmmaking.

With every passing year, Fury Road’s place alongside some of the genre’s seminal entries is calcified — Die Hard, Terminator 2, The Matrix… Mad Max: Fury Road.

That’s where it belongs — In action movie Valhalla, all shiny and chrome.

What a movie. What a lovely movie.