"Wingardium Furiosa"

Furiosa - English - Dystopian/ Action 
148 mins - In Theatres

It has been 45 years since the first Mad Max movie (starring Mel Gibson)! I salute George Miller - for keeping the faith and continuing to "reboot" and develop the universe. This movie is a prequel to the mind bogglingly stunning  2015 movie Mad Max - Fury Road and tells the story of one of the beloved characters, Furiosa( immortalized by Charlize Theron) (Please watch Fury road, before this)

The young Furiosa (Alyla Browne, terrific job by the casting director!) is kidnapped by the goons of Dementus ( Chris "Thor" Hemsworth), who ends up killing her birth mother as well. She grows up around Dementus' ambition to challenge Immortan Joe,  finds her way into  Joe's harem (as part of a truce). She escapes being a slave and befriends Jack (Immortan Joe's lieutant), who teaches her all about the guzzolene and the war rig, growing into Furiosa (Anya Taylor Joy) who wants her revenge. 

Chris Hemsworth is delightfully devilish , stealing every scene, doing full justice to his part.  The make up / prosthetics are great and his voice modulation also is damn good. Anya Taylor Joy appears on the screen as the adult Furiosa almost an hour into the movie, speaks even little dialogue than Tom Hardy did in Fury road, but her big eyes and chiselled face help enhance her performance - she is excellent! Tom Burke as Jack is noble and understated. 

Fury Road set the bar unassailably high, across almost every parameter. The landscape, the universe, the stunning live action choreography , the breathless pacing! and Charlize Theron!- so it was always a challenge for Furiosa's origin story to surmount.  

The movie lays down many of the constants in Fury Road, which at the time did not do  back stories, so it is fair to take a little time to expand in this film. The story of the original war rig, the physician who becomes the harem's obstetrician,  Furiosa losing  her arm (and her home!) - all of these are wonderfully weaved in,  but it still takes a good 20 mins longer than one would have liked and so the pacing suffers.  All credit due to Anya Taylor Joy's physical performance and no fault of her own, the shadow of Charlize Theron looms (such was her gravitas in Fury Road).

The action set pieces are still damn good - the kidnap and pursuit in the initial scenes, the relentless attack on the war rig and the climactic battles are all superbly shot and executed. The visual effects in some sequences are surprisingly average, but the practical action choreography, the cinematography is all top notch and makes the movie overall a worthy prequel and a solid big screen entertainment.