He spent nearly six months in Namibia during the production of the film and was the head of the Motorcycle Specialist team which was responsible for most of the motorcycle based stunts in the film.
We recently chatted to Gall about his experiences and you can read the feature in ADB #430, which hits the stands on Monday June 1.
In the meantime, here is ADB’s review of the latest entry into the classic Australian action franchise.
Review – Mad Max: Fury Road
They just don’t make movies like they used to.
Once upon a time there was such thing as real stuntmen and real stunts. There were real special effects that were created manually and there were real vehicles that actually worked and were actually destroyed.
Films were a lot simpler as well. Often you had a hero who had to overcome some sort of a crisis. There was less talk, more action and the plot was easy to follow.
These days, everything is done digitally. Things like CGI and motion capture have replaced the ‘old-school’ way of doing things.
This is why Mad Max: Fury Road is somewhat of a triumph. While modern cinema technology is still employed, Director George Miller and the rest of the Mad Max crew opted to use as little CGI as possible. Instead, they used real stuntmen, real vehicles, and real explosions to create a two hour thrill ride that never lets up.
Fury Road is an old-school action movie. It tells the story of its hero, Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), who gets caught up in a dispute between a post-apocalyptic warlord, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and his former lieutenant Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who has escaped with Joes five wives in a tanker truck known as the War Rig.
What follows is essentially a two hour, explosive and action packed chase scene which only stops momentarily for a breather.
The film bears many similarities to John Ford’s classic 1939 western, Stagecoach, further evidence that Director/Writer George Miller is inspired by cinema history.
For us here at ADB, we took great interest in the massive fleet of motorcycles that were used in the film. At one point in the movie, as the War Rig is being chased through a canyon, a group of desert dwelling dirt bike riders attack the truck, leaping over the top of it and throwing explosives at it.
You would be forgiven for thinking that much of this was simply clever editing or CGI, but the truth is that stunt riders such as Cody Mackie and Robbie Marshall, actually performed these stunts in real time on real bikes with supercross suspension.
Nothing about this movie seems fake and that is its biggest strength.
The word masterpiece is thrown around a lot, but Mad Max: Fury Road may just be that.
ADB gives the film four and a half flaming motorcycles out of five.
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