Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Story: Set in a dystopian future, a prequel to 2015’s Oscar winning blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa is an origin story that rides high on emotion, feminist intent, and insane action.

Review: It’s not easy for adaptations to live up to the glory of their much-celebrated predecessors. The task only gets tougher if the former outing happens to be an action masterpiece like ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ that set a new benchmark for the genre altogether. It defined what adrenaline-fueled, cliff-hanger-jaw dropping action can look like. How does one top an action marvel like Fury Road?

Director George Miller, 79, masterfully navigates this situation. He doesn’t compete with his heroic former film but treats Furiosa like a standalone origin story about the making of a fierce warrior and infuses it with the heart of the Mad Max saga. On the surface, this may seem like a dialled down, sanitised version of Fury Road in terms of gore but it packs a punch. The film holds its own with its unflinching belief in hope over hate. While Fury Road used action as its cinematic language, this one strikes a balance between the gripping stunts, story, and the world-building. Action doesn’t dominate per se and yet it controls and consumes the film giving you the desired Mad Max impact.

The story takes you through Furiosa’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) tragic but powerful journey. A child deprived of childhood makes for an adult seething with rage and revenge. A lone wolf and a warrior in a world of scavengers. With no one to fall back on, her stoic exterior gives away years of trauma and suffering. The film observes what loss of innocence can do to a child and Anya Taylor-Joy, who barely has a dialogue throughout the film, conveys that angst masterfully.

The film finds its bad guy in Chris Hemsworth with a prosthetic nose as Dementus. The franchise goes the Marvel way in terms of humour and humanising a villain as Hemsworth feels more eccentric than menacing even when absolutely unhinged. While Anya and Hemsworth are the faces of the film, Miller ensures his main characters are outstanding action set pieces and high-octane chase sequences between the war rig and motorbikes that ensues violent combat in the Wasteland.

Furiosa speaks of a distant future where mankind goes rogue, and people must endure uninhabitable conditions to survive. Lack of water, extreme heat, no food, no compassion. This strangely feels closer to reality than we would like to accept. This film deserves a big screen experience. This is action at its best.