MAD MAX: FURY ROAD Rating: NNNNN
Where to watch: iTunes
In Mad Max: Fury Road, director/co-writer George Miller returns to the post-apocalyptic wasteland he last visited 30 years ago in Beyond Thunderdome – and it’s like he’s never been away.
Structured as one long chase, the film finds the exhausted Max Rocka-tansky (Tom Hardy) captured by a desert death cult and eventually roped into helping a handful of women escape from a tyrant. Hardy’s note perfect as Max, forever weighing the good he might be able to do against the trouble it’ll surely rain down on him, and Nicholas Hoult is a lot of fun as a nihilistic zealot. But the film’s real emotional core is the gimlet-eyed war driver Furiosa (Charlize Theron), scarred by her warrior’s life and bent on redemption.
Working with minimal dialogue and maximum kineticism, Hardy and Theron grapple through Miller’s glorious, brutal, utterly thrilling adventure movie with not an ounce of sentimentality or a single speech about the importance of family. This is what fast and furious really looks like.
See our interview with George Miller here.
