A Masterpiece of Madness

Rating: 10/10 (16 May 2015)

Let me start by saying this. This movie is MAD. The title was not lying. This film was exactly what one wants from a summer blockbuster.
George Miller has come out publicly and said that this is neither really a reboot or a sequel. This is simply another story following Max Rockatansky. In this story, we see Max being captured By Immortan Joe and his band of War Boys. Once he escapes he comes upon Imperator Furiosa who is attempting to rescue the "wives" from the oppression of Immortan Joe. Cue action. I love how sometimes simple plots like this can set up an entire world of action. In the action genre, we don't need very convoluted and intricate plots that keep taking unexpected twists and turns. In Mad Max: Fury Road's case, the simpler, the better.
Now on to what everyone is wondering about. The action. And yes, the stunts and music when it's all going down is some of the best action ever put to screen. By the time the climactic chase rolls around, the action is even more jaw-dropping and breath taking than before because the stakes continue to be raised. This movie is a two hour chase that never has a dull moment.
As for the characters, they were all spectacular. Especially Furiosa, played beautifully by Charlize Theron. Though she is a bad-ass, she never upstages Hardy as Max. Being the emotional core of the film, playing Furiosa was one of the harder tasks to correctly perform and Theron knocked it out of the park. For Tom Hardy as Max, he was just as great as Theron. Having minimal dialog and mainly using grunts to show emotion, Hardy gave Max a surprising amount of depth, though still not nearly as much as Furiosa. This is not a bad thing however, since Max was never a truly deep character, he was an action star who kicked a lot of ass. And of course he does that in this film. The rest of the characters were played great as well especially Nux (played by Nicholas Hoult) who brought even more emotional depth this.
Overall, this is a gleefully insane film. The relentless pace never holds back on the audience and it always has them glued to the edges of their seats. If you can, I highly recommend everyone does themselves a favor and witness this master-class action phenomenon that will arguably go down as one of the finest action films ever made.