Furiosa: Purely for petrolheads
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga R16, 148 mins Critic’s rating: 2/5 Reviewed by Kevin Maher
Athundering beginning and a searing sense of place fail to compensate for the wearisome repetition and empty theatrics that slowly swamp this much-awaited blockbuster.
It’s a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, and an origin tale for a breakout character: Charlize Theron’s lethal henchwoman, Imperator Furiosa.
It also, alas, falls squarely into the Disney Cruella trap by veering away from narrative originality and concerning itself only with superfluous backstory.
Yes, it’s nice to know how Furiosa acquired her bionic arm, just as it was nice to know why Cruella hated dalmatians. But that’s simply not enough to sustain two and a half hours of nihilistic Wacky Races.
It starts well, though, with expectations of mythic grandeur as the preteen Furiosa (Alyla Browne, doing sterling work) is kidnapped by grungy bikers from a tiny green oasis in a vast, sand-blown post-apocalyptic Australia.
Her fearless mother, Mary (Charlee Fraser), launches herself in hot pursuit, sniper rifle in hand, running barefoot, then horse riding, then motorbike riding, ultimately terrifying the captors with her sheer relentlessness and murderous intensity.
The veteran director George Miller is at his best here, streamlining all narrative threads to a propulsive charge towards a primal goal.
Then that sequence ends, and another begins, and the film splits off into vaguely interconnected chapters that may seem moody and thoughtful but kill the momentum, as well as betray the “great race” structural concept that made Fury Road so appealing.
In its place we have Furiosa bouncing around the sun-scorched Wasteland between two warlords and surrogate daddies.
They are the pustular Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and the scary yet goofy Dementus, played by a self-indulgent, scenery-chewing Chris Hemsworth.
The Thor actor wears a latex nose and prominent dentures for no discernible reason other than the permission to overplay every scene. Less Peter Sellers, more Les Patterson.
Furiosa eventually emerges into kickass womanhood, when she’s played by Anya Taylor-Joy. The Queen’s Gambit star gives fearsome close-ups but adds little else and never convinces as the character
who will become Theron’s Amazonian warrior. This Furiosa is also lumbered with a dud man-friend, Jack, played by a catatonically bland Tom Burke.
Still, the film looks fabulous, and includes a couple of savvy references to The Disasters of War by Francisco Goya. And, yes, the set-piece stunts are done for real.
But are we now all cola-slurping petrolheads at a monster truck rally, cheering gormlessly from the stands when the Raminator goes smash? There has to be more.