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“My childhood! My mother! I want them back!” With that wail of anguish, young Furiosa, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, sets the tone for the vengeful fury that runs through George Miller’s gripping, spectacular backstory to his 2015’s Mad Max Reboot. Once again, there are insanely colossal and outlandish convoy action sequences that mix up the notion of “pursuit” and “violent combat” in a series of insane high-speed races between motorcycles, 18-wheelers and armed parascendants, all attacking and shooting at each other while fanatically approach in the same direction. The vehicles themselves are what make the Mad Max movies so weird. Many films are called “surreal,” but these strange, ritualistic gladiator vehicles in the reddish-brown wasteland really do look like something out of Giorgio de Chirico or Max Ernst.
Furiosa is the origin story of the glamorous, one-armed badass from the first film. By the way, I haven’t seen such a loss of an arm since 11-year-old Midshipman Blakeney was amputated on board ship Master and Commander – and he made a little more noise about it than Furiosa. Of course, the action takes place in the vast post-apocalyptic wasteland of Australia, where the warlords in their various compounds manage the precious supplies of food, water, ammo and fuel. Furiosa, played in the first film by Charlize Theron, was tentatively in the service of the hated chieftain Immortal Joe; she was responsible for attacking rivals and enemies and vowed to be a rebel.
Now her younger self is played by Taylor-Joy (and as a child by Alila Brown) as a fierce young warrior-survivor who effectively fills the action role originally played by Mad Max. Furiosa (and that’s really the name she starts with, not a nickname given later) was a child who was once part of a quiet community of souls in an obscure but richly fertile oasis, a progressive, peaceful place that literally had winds turbines. She is kidnapped and finds herself enslaved by Doctor Dementus, a strangely entertaining villain played by Chris Hemsworth with long hair and a fake prosthetic nose. Furiosa must fall into the hands of the loathsome Immortal Joe (now played by Lachie Hulme), in whose services she must aid the platform driver, Praetorian Jack, played by Tom Burke. She seems to have an entirely platonic romantic relationship with Jack, but Mad Max’s world is interestingly genderless, and no man, however brutal, dares make a move against Furiosa. But all this leads to her final confrontation with the terrible Dementus.
Hemsworth comes very close to nailing the entire film, but Miller keeps the humor in check, as that kind of comic flexibility can sometimes turn things upside down. Hemsworth is really funny when Dementus insists on tasting Furiosa’s tears because he’s heard that tears of sadness taste different than tears of joy. Rubbing them on his tongue, he muses, “Grief is spicier—spicier!” He pronounces it, “Pee–kwant,” which somehow makes it that much worse. He also, in his conceit, insists on driving a phalanx of motorcycles around as a kind of chariot.
In a way, Dementus is a character artificially created to give Furiosa someone to face, a warlord other than Immortal Joe. But Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth make a great couple, and Taylor-Joy is an extremely convincing action heroine. She sells this sequel.
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