"Mad Max" may be the title, but Theron is the Road Warrior.

Rating: 9/10 (18 July 2015)

Watched Mad Max. Keep in mind the sequel to the original "Mad Max" was a movie called "The Road Warrior" released in the early 80s which single handedly defined and ushered in the genre of post apocalyptic survival in worlds gone mad. There was always however, clearly defined lines of who is good and who is bad that the audience can cheer for, sympathize with, and as well hold contempt for, despite the "good guys" often having to do things just as bad as the bad guys.
The new "Mad Max" throws no pretensions of righteousness on the audience. This movie, its director, and its screenwriter understand that in such a world.. everyone is bad. This is not a "fun" movie. This is not a "feel good summer flick" ... its a two hour journey into hell with a devil on both shoulders. And its brilliant.
I won't give spoilers.. but had the movie been called "The Road Warrior" then beyond any doubt that Warrior would be Charlize Theron rather than the actor who does play "Mad Max" for which other than being "who" is in the first scenes of the movie, is no more fit for survival than any of the other characters. He is the one whose perspective is often used to relay events that Theron invokes but no one is the actual center of. Instead an array of characters collide again and again as the three primary roles fight their way across the wasteland. This eclectic mix of personalities and bizarre personas are played out relatively small amounts of screen time, but by actors and a screenplay so perfectly on target it only takes those few minutes to attach ourselves to them and realize the madness they call normal life.
The score transcends the movie. There are times when the most intense moments of wanton death are accompanied by passages of orchestra matched with cinematography that shows a requiem to insanity which laments those dying rather than making them prop pieces blown up for us to be "thrilled" by. We the audience witnesses the only reactions characters in such a world can have when hope is not the reason one lives, but the glee of dying gloriously for a cult of personality one believes will carry them after death. This readiness to die... ITS the reason we sympathize with them. The wasted loyalty is sad.. their joy at death the ultimate symptom of how truly mad the world is... our sympathy for the devil as it rears it head over and over makes us come face to face with the fact that the devil has no where else to go either when the whole world is hell.