More Than Mad

Grief drives a fantastic installment in George Miller's series.

- BILGE EBIRI

"AS THE WORLD falls around us, how must we bear its cruelties?" The words that open George Miller's Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga are very much in line with the apocalyptic prologues of most films in the series, but this time the question haunts Miller's slow-burn epic like a malignant, merciless spirit. Although thrilling in its own right, Furiosa at times feels like a personal and perhaps necessary counterpoint to the exhilarations of Fury Road (2015), which was so enthralling that it was easy to lose sight of the bigger, sadder picture. In the postapocalyptic gearhead action series upon which Miller built his early career, Furiosa somber, steady, and supremely twisted-is proof that none of this stuff is really supposed to be cool. "We are the already dead, Little D, you and me, says Chris Hemsworth's sadistic warlord, Dementus, to Anya TaylorJoy's vengeful Furiosa late in the film, using the nickname he gave her. These are the end times, and they the end people.

Some Fury Road fans may have forgotten this bleak truth, but Miller clearly wants to remind us. A prequel, a revenge tale, and even something of a bildungsroman, the new film begins with young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) kidnapped by a group of Dementus's motorcycle marauders, who are then chased by her mother (Charlee Fraser), a member of the Vuvalini tribe. Intending to save her daughter and make sure no outsiders learn of their verdant little oasis, Mom takes the riders out one by one. What makes this early chase so striking is the way it's presented as a relay race of dwindling resources, with everyone scrambling to conserve what they have, transferring fuel tanks from one bike to another as soon as one rider goes down. Everything is always on the verge of running out and dying out.