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‘My childhood! My mother! I want them back!” With this howl of anguish, young Furiosa, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, sets the tone of vengeful rage that runs through George Miller’s immersive, spectacular prequel to his Mad Max reboot from 2015. Once again, there are the crazily colossal and weird convoy-action sequences which fuse the notion of “chase” and “violent combat” into a series of delirious high-velocity contests between motorbikes, 18-wheelers and armed parascenders all attacking and shooting at each other while fanatically zooming in the same direction. The vehicles themselves are what makes the Mad Max movies so very strange. Many films are called “surreal”, but these strange, ritualistic gladiator-vehicle displays in the reddish-brown emptiness really do look like something by Giorgio de Chirico or Max Ernst.
Furiosa is the origin story of the glamorous, one-armed badass from the first film. Incidentally, I haven’t seen an arm loss like this since 11-year-old midshipman Blakeney got his amputated aboard ship in Master and Commander – and he made a bit more of a fuss about it than Furiosa. It is of course set in Australia’s vast post-apocalyptic wilderness where warlords in their various compounds rule over precious reserves of food, water, ammo and fuel. Furiosa, played in the first film by Charlize Theron, was notionally in the service of the hateful chieftain Immortan Joe; she was in charge of leading raiding parties against rivals and enemies, and fated herself to be a rebel.
Now her younger self is played by Taylor-Joy (and as a child by Alyla Browne) as a fierce young warrior-survivor who effectively fulfils the action role originally played by Mad Max. Furiosa (and that really is the name she starts with, not a nickname given later) was a kid who was once part of a quiet community of souls in an obscure but richly fertile oasis, a progressive, peaceable place which literally had wind turbines. She is kidnapped and winds up enslaved by Doctor Dementus, a strangely hilarious villain played by Chris Hemsworth with long hair and a dodgy prosthetic nose. Furiosa is to pass into the hands of the hideous Immortan Joe (now played by Lachy Hulme) in whose service she is to assist the driver of the rig, Praetorian Jack, played by Tom Burke. She seems to have an entirely platonic romantic connection with Jack, but the Mad Max world is interestingly sexless, and no male, however brutal, dares makes a move on Furiosa. But it is all leading up to her final showdown with the awful Dementus.
Hemsworth comes very close to pinching the whole film, but Miller keeps a lid on humour as that kind of comic flex can sometimes upend it all. Hemsworth really is very entertaining when Dementus insists on tasting Furiosa’s desolate tears because he has heard that tears of sadness have a different flavour to tears of joy. Dabbing them on his tongue, he muses: “Sorrow is more piquant – zesty!” He pronounces it: “Pee–kwant” which somehow makes it much worse. He also, in his conceit, insists on driving a phalanx of motorbikes around like a kind of chariot.
In a sense, Dementus is a character artificially contrived to give Furiosa someone to face off with, a warlord distinct from Immortan Joe. But Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth are a great pairing and Taylor-Joy is an overwhelmingly convincing action heroine. She sells this sequel.