Buckle up those seat belts!

Rating: 10/10 (17 May 2015)

Intense, visceral, perverse, brutal, exhilarating – Mad Max: Fury Road is all of these and much more!
A simple storyline without any frills or back-story, the movie grabs you right from the start and doesn't let go. Set in a dystopian future, where wars are being fought over water, the movie follows Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) as she attempts to escape from the clutches of the despotic Immortan Joe (Hugh Keys-Byrnes), taking his harem along with her. Of course, Immortan finds out, and proceeds to unleash an all-out pursuit of Furiosa and his harem of Five Wives.
So where does Mad Max come in, you may ask? Well, the fact is that the titular Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) actually plays second fiddle in this movie; it must have taken Hardy a certain amount of courage to play an iconic role that ends up being secondary to that of the female protagonist. The movie has a strong, yet non-strident feminist tone that does not detract from the rest of the action, and seems like a very natural extension of it.
The movie opens with a high-octane chase when Immortan Joe's War Boys take Max captive in the Citadel. On finding out that he is a universal blood donor, they hook him up as a blood bag to Nux (Nicholas Hoult) a War Boy afflicted by tumors and therefore running on "half-life". Max, still hooked up, is taken along in pursuit of Furiosa, during which he is able to escape. Antagonists at first, Furiosa and Max become allies in their quest for the Green Place, her homeland.
Every high-intensity chase sequence is immediately followed by a higher-intensity one. Every time you think that it can't get any better, it does. Every time you feel that you can now start breathing, something else comes along to knock the breath out of your lungs! The best part is that there is no shaky-cam or in-your- face-cam, which is what passes for action nowadays. The action sequences actually seem credible and effectively tread the fine line between glorious spectacle and complete insanity. There's actually a pretty good reason for this – it seems that the use of CGI was kept to a minimum, and stuntmen were used as far as possible.
The movie is not just high-octane action and incredible pursuit vehicles; the themes of freedom, sacrifice and redemption form a strong emotional core for the movie. Stellar performances from Theron, Hardy and Hoult elevate this to much more than a mindless action flick. Hardy's monosyllabic Max is tortured by a past he cannot forget, while Theron is splendid as Furiosa, willing to kill (and die) for a childhood utopia she can barely remember. Hoult is unexpectedly able as Nux, in a role that calls for equal amounts of viciousness and tenderness. No matter how high your expectations are, believe me, this movie will meet them all, and then some!
"What a day, what a lovely day".