Fury Road

FURY ROAD is doing great business at the Cocteau... and, indeed, all over Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the country. I saw it myself last night. It has got to be one of the most relentless action movies ever made, if not THE most intense. Pretty much non-stop from beginning to end.

I've often said that the climatic chase sequence at the end of THE ROAD WARRIOR was the best car chase scene ever put on film (it's what DAMNATION ALLEY should have been, as I once told Roger Zelazny -- who agreed). Well, FURY ROAD is the ROAR WARRIOR chase sequence with the dial turned up... not just to 11, but to 47 or some such.

Truth be told, I sometimes get bored during car chases. Not this one. It has a human context that gives it a power lacking in FAST & FURIOUS and TRANSFORMERS movies.

So, yes, I liked this one. A lot.

One thing I did miss, however. THE ROAD WARRIOR (a great film) and BEYOND THUNDERDOME (a good film with flaws) both ended with wonderful, moving, elegiac voice overs. The one from THUNDERDOME always brings a tear to my eye.

FURY ROAD has no similar elegy at the end. I missed that... the poetry of it, and the sense of triumph and tragedy that it left me with, a feeling that elevated the movie into myth.

Even so, it's a helluva movie.

See it at the Cocteau, if you can. (We'll be showing it for two more weeks, at least). But see it somewhere, regardless.

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Fury Road