Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) make an unlikely team in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (George Miller, 2015)
Pier 63 Lawn, Hudson River Park
Cross at West 22nd or 24th St.
Wednesday, July 6, free, 8:30
www.hudsonriverpark.org
www.madmaxmovie.com
After a thirty-year hiatus, Max Rockatansky is resurrected in the ultrafeminist Mad Max: Fury Road, but this time the lonely hero is played by Tom Hardy, following in the footsteps of Mel Gibson, who starred in 1979’s Mad Max, 1981’s The Road Warrior, and 1985’s Beyond Thunderdome. After nearly two decades of stops and starts, Mad Max creator George Miller finally completed the fourth picture in the franchise, and it’s quite possibly the best of the bunch. In a postapocalyptic world where the primary goal is simply just to survive, Max has been captured by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and turned into a blood bag for the skeletal Nux (Nicholas Hoult). But when Max encounters Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) driving a big War Rig, escaping from the Citadel with five of Immortan Joe’s breeding wives — Toast the Knowing (Zoë Kravitz), Capable (Riley Keough), the Dag (Abbey Lee), Cheedo the Fragile (Courtney Eaton), and the Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), who is pregnant — they are forced to team up if they are going to make it to the Green Place and live. Max, who still has regular flashbacks of his brutally murdered wife and child, is, in a way, forming a new family with the tough-as-nails, one-handed Furiosa, the young wives, and even Nux, as Miller (Babe, Happy Feet) and cowriters Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris emphasize motherhood and milk amid the spectacular, nonstop car chases and sensational violence. As always, Miller has included a cast of lunatic fringers, including Slit (Josh Helman), Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones), the People Eater (John Howard), the Bullet Farmer (Richard Carter), the Organic Mechanic (Angus Sampson), the Valkyrie (Megan Gale), the Keeper of the Seeds (Melissa Jaffer), and Corpus Colossus (Quentin Kenihan), along with some awesome vehicles, all caught on film with breathless glee by cinematographer John Seale. Mad Max: Fury Road blends wrought emotion with a mostly analog technical virtuosity that earned it ten Oscar nominations, winning for Best Film Editing (Margaret Sixel), Best Production Design (Colin Gibson and Lisa Thompson), Best Costume Design (Jenny Beavan), Best Makeup and Hairstyling (Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, and Damian Martin), Best Sound Mixing (Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff, and Ben Osmo), and Best Sound Editing (Mark Mangini and David White). It’s a glorious tale that, if we’re not careful, could be our destiny. Mad Max: Fury Road is screening July 6 on the Pier 63 lawn in Hudson River Park in the Hudson RiverFlicks: Big Hit Wednesdays series, which continues through August 5 with such other 2015 films as Trainwreck, The Big Short, and Creed.