Director: George Miller
Mad Max: Fury Road has been praised for the choreographing of its action sequences, which are filmed and edited in such a manner that appeals to spatial logic more than the sense of noisy, kinetic movement that many action pictures in the post-Greengrass era have favored. But beyond the crispness in its visual execution is a nicely balanced narrative, both sparse and massive, primal and otherworldly. It’s treated with the simplicity of a western–a concluding quote from First History Man points to that intention: “Where must we go, we who wonder this wasteland, in search of our better selves.” Every character strives for some very basic sense of redemption or purpose, whether that is to forget the tragedies of the past or to find meaning once spiritual salvation is out the window. George Miller is less interested in narrative convolutions than in unearthing an imaginative world in all of its details, from its distribution of resources, to its religion, to its sexuality. And the aforementioned action sequences are filmed and wrought with the purpose of clarity, with such mini-agendas as removing harpoons from a tanker explicitly spelt out. The editing sometimes does seem at odds with the purity of the practical effects and stunts–the spectacles are often so extraordinary that one would like to see a shot breathe for a few seconds longer–but the situations are so dynamic and inventive that the film never drags, which can’t be said of many action movies of recent years.
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