Fury Road is, to paraphrase Mad Max’s Nightrider, “a fuel-injected suicide machine, a rocker, a roller, an out-of-controller,” and a genuine, mind-blowing masterpiece of pure action cinema. If any other film this summer tops its N02-powered adrenaline rush, I’ll eat Mel Gibson’s boots.
Director George Miller has wisely replaced his original albeit unpredictable ex-superstar with Englishman Tom Hardy, who has a similar stony mien and wears the gearhead icon’s battered leather jacket with somewhat less swagger and more pathos. Truly, this Max is mad, haunted by PTSD and stung by visions of long-gone allies and kin. We first glimpse him standing beside his equally iconic 600HP, V8 Interceptor, gobbling a two-headed desert lizard for breakfast. Before long, he is captured by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), the humongous leader of an army of white-painted War Boys who, ridden with pseudo-religious fervor and some horrific pox, use normal humans as living blood-bags.
Charlize Theron in "Mad Max: Fury Road"
In Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, gasoline was the lifeblood of this dreadful post-apocalyptic society; now it’s water, which Joe controls. He also has a harem of lovely young women he regularly impregnates, hoping for an heir. Which brings us to Charlize Theron’s remarkable performance as the one-armed warrior Furiosa. She is Fury Road’s heart and soul — well, after all those nightmarishly souped-up deathmobiles — and this future über-feminist/humanist gets all the good lines.
Not that there’s much dialogue at all in this kiss-of-steel chase movie to end all chase movies. There’s damage aplenty: metal damage, brain damage and enough practical, non-CGI, vehicular and pyro gags to make Stunt Rock feel like Goodnight Moon. Miller and his editors make the most viciously hyperstylized moments appear stuttery and surreal, like a glorious bad dream. Mad Max: Fury Road is epic, awe-inducing, extreme eye candy of the highest order. Unstoppable and righteous, it roars across the no-lane hardpan like the four-iron horseman of the kinetic apocalypse, amped up on bathtub crank and undiluted movie love. Oh, what a movie. What a lovely movie!
