Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

After most of Australia has been reduced to a desert wasteland, the Vuvallini of the Green Place maintain a patch of civilization. One of their daughters, Furiosa (Alyla Browne), falls into the clutches of the biker warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), who raises her as a daughter before trading her to rival warlord Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme). Over the years, Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) rises through the ranks of Joe’s forces alongside veteran driver Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke). As tensions build between Dementus and Joe, Furiosa never loses sight of seeking revenge against those who wronged her and finding her way home.

 

A prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa bears many of writer/director/franchise creator George Miller’s stylistic flourishes: riveting action sequences, minimal dialogue, and a glimmer of hope amid brutality and despair. Though longer and gorier than previous Mad Max films, Furiosa avoids sinking under the weight of excess. There’s an urgency to the title character’s plight that sustains the film throughout its two-and-a-half hours of desert highway chases, sieges, ambushes, torments, and occasional moments of quiet contemplation. Composer Junkie XL (credited under his real name Tom Holkenborg this time) once again provides a suitably intense and ominous score.

 

The cast is a combination of returning performers and newcomers. Taylor-Joy steps in for the older Charlize Theron and matches her steely nerve and unflappable competence. Hulme, replacing the late Hugh Keays-Byrne, is every bit as sinister and imposing (albeit more rational this time around). Joe’s son Rictus (Nathan Jones), doctor the Organic Mechanic (Angus Sampson), and ally the People Eater (John Howard) are all played by returning actors, but the fact that they don’t look any younger is confusing given the film’s timeline (a good fifteen years before Fury Road). As Dementus, Hemsworth is a mixed bag. The character is bombastic with an overt goofiness (i.e. riding around in a motorcycle chariot like a would-be Roman emperor) that belies his cruelty. On the one hand, Hemsworth seems to be having fun hamming it up, and it’s refreshing to see the Aussie actor play an Australian character for a change. On the other hand, we’re meant (via the teddy bear he carries around) to see Dementus as broken by the loss of his family, but this construction of him as a cautionary tale for letting vengeance consume seems a bit ham-handed.

 

Perhaps because the two films are so closely intertwined, Furiosa inevitably invites comparisons to Fury Road. While its action sequences are on-par, it lacks the earlier film’s impact and power to surprise. As franchise prequels/spinoffs/origin stories go, however, Furiosa is still far better than those designations alone suggest.