Tom Hardy steps into Mel Gibson's battered leathers as taciturn road warrior Max Rockatansky, stumbling into a deadly feud between Charlize Theron's equally close-mouthed Imperator Furiosa and the diseased Immortan Joe, played by Hugh Keays-Byrne (who played a different villain in the original "Mad Max"). Joe rules the wastes as part of a trio of equally sick warlords, indulging their venal desires and lording over the populace with the support of their brainwashed Warboys, a cult of gleeful warriors exalting in the chance to sacrifice themselves in the most lavishly destructive ways possible.
Fans of Hardy's "look, Mum, I'm doing a voice" style of acting will be pleased to hear that even though he says about five words he comes up with another corker of an accent, communicating in a sort of growly mumble halfway between a V8 engine and Milton from "Office Space." Nicholas Hoult is in top form as a Warboy desperate to win his corrupt leader's favour, while Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoe Kravitz, Riley Keough and Abbey Lee provide the film's heart as a harem of desert dryads.
But truly this is Theron's film: she's spellbinding as the grizzled warrior fighting tooth-and-nail to survive -- and maybe even find meaning in this mad world.
It's a world in which it's not just "guzzle-ine" that's fought over, but the very fluids of life: water. Blood. Mother's milk. "Fury Road" is a beautifully realised vision of the post-apocalyptic future, filmed in Namibia but looking like another planet. The screen explodes with the fevered imaginings of a civilisation with no past and no future. From the Warboys' twisted cult, to the grotesque denizens each more bizarre than the last, to the crazy vehicles including a Slipknot concert on 18 wheels, "Fury Road" is packed with surreal detail. Even the character names alone are a treat: Rictus Erectus, Toast the Knowing, The Splendid Angharad, Cheedo the Fragile, The Doof Warrior and many more.
"Fury Road" is movie-making madness to the max. Road rage never looked so good.
"Mad Max: Fury Road" crashes into theatres on 14 May in the UK and Australia and 15 May in the US.