The road to hell ... and massive box office

Rating: Null/10 (16 May 2015)

Following "Mad Max" (1979), "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior" (1981), and "Mad Max Beyond The Thunderdome" (1985), thirty years later the same writer and director, Australian George Miller (now aged 70), offers us not so much a sequel as a re imaging of the eponymous hero with Britain's Tom Hardy taking over the lead role from Mel Gibson. The result is a triumph.
There is a plot - but it is a simple one of escape by and attempted recapture of the five beautiful wives/breeders of the chieftain Immortan Joe (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne who was in the original movie as a character called Toecutter). There is dialogue - but it is minimal and Max himself is so laconic he does not even announce his name until almost the end. But never mind the story or the words, this is supremely a film with an utterly thrilling vision of non-stop action and excitement.
If the 15th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch were alive today, this might well be the fantastical nightmare that he would conjure. Shot in the glorious deserts of Namibia, this is a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by wonderfully bizarre-looking characters and incredibly-inventive vehicles with war drums and bass guitar supplementing the roar of the gas-guzzling trucks, cars and bikes.
The road they race along is properly named and many characters die and many vehicles explode in a fury of conflict and conflagration with barely a pause for breath - and all achieved with the minimum of CGI. Max is aided by two very different warriors: the one-armed, feminist freedom fighter Imperator Furiosa (a shaved-headed Charlize Theron) and a bare-chested, tumour-ridden Nux (white-mouthed Nicholas Hoult) who exhibit more life than the emotionally-wasted (and mad with loss) Max.
Apparently Tom Hardy has signed on for three more "Mad Max" films which is fine by me.