Long Time Coming....

Rating: 8/10 (7 June 2015)

As of this writing I still haven't decided what vote to give it.
I enjoyed the movie, let's start with that.
As expected, there is a lot of 'ridiculousness' in this movie: the vehicles, the people,....well there's not a lot else in the movie beyond those two!
Like many Americans, I suspect, I saw The Road Warrior first. I fell in love with it. Then I saw Mad Max, and that helped some other things make sense in The Road Warrior.
As I understand it, Fury Road is supposed to fall somewhere in- between the two.
Well...OK.
I still enjoyed the vehicle chases/action/combat stuff, the very odd community from which it all starts, and the fact that I think this movie had a lot more story resolution in it than The Road Warrior. (trying not to add spoilers)
The Cirque de Solei folks were wonderful of course. The "Doof Warrior" was a very interesting touch (he's the guitar player), as a nod to throughout our history, troops in the field communicated with drums and horns and so on, this just seems a modern extension of that.
And knowing that the vehicular stuff was not CGI, but real. I really appreciated that part.
So the story focuses mostly around A woman and a decision she makes (Charlize Theron's character). From there, we get to see everyone else spring into action in some form or fashion. And with that, ultimately they kept the story fairly simple, and it made sense.
It is at least an engaging story and a cohesive telling of it.
For myself, I didn't read a whole lot into the 'plot' but I'm sure if you really went looking for anything from "save the planet" types to militant feminists, you could probably find it. To me, in context, it all made sense.
For things I didn't particularly care for, there aren't many. However: 1) Just like in Road Warrior, apparently nobody who makes these movies believes that stack-style exhaust pipes get HOT!! Both movies have people crawling around them after they've been running a good while....
2) Hardy's Max, particularly near the end with Furiosa, just doesn't seem as....detached....as Gibson's Max, when he tells her his name. At the end of Mad Max, Gibson's Max had already snapped like a freeze dried rubber band; but he still had a code he worked by. Hardy, while taciturn, gets some flashbacks here and there but doesn't seem as 'damaged'. He's brutal, yes, and by necessity. He just didn't come across as being as damaged as he should have been. But then that's simply my opinion.
So sit back, and enjoy the ride!