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Culture

'Mad Max: Fury Road' is a jawdropping ode to the road (spoiler-free review)

Actors Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron jam the pedal to the metal in this stunningly painted, sandblasted future of fire and blood.

Richard Trenholm headshot
Richard Trenholm
2 min read

"My name is Max. My world is fire...and blood."

Having seen the gobsmackingly over-the-top trailers, I went into "Mad Max: Fury Road" worrying that it would be review-proof. And it is, in that my review could consist of me pointing at the screen for 2 hours and going, "AAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHHTHISISAMAAAAAAZZZIIINNNG!"

"Fury Road" jams the pedal to the metal and keeps its foot down for a breakneck 120 minutes of vehicular carnage, a jawdroppingly beautifully painted demolition derby streaked through with humour as dry as the desert in which it's set and hearts as black as the precious "guzzle-ine" that fuels it. Cracked lips and sandblasted faces leer from the ochre nightmare of a world fallen to rust, flame blossoms from speeding war rigs, twisted metal and bodies crash and tumble -- the mayhem is viscerally, exhilaratingly real, making the glossy CGI heroics of " Avengers: Age of Ultron" look like a Saturday morning cartoon.

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Tom Hardy steps into Mel Gibson's battered leathers as taciturn road warrior Max Rockatansky, stumbling into a deadly feud between Charlize Theron's equally close-mouthed Imperator Furiosa and the diseased Immortan Joe, played by Hugh Keays-Byrne (who played a different villain in the original "Mad Max"). Joe rules the wastes as part of a trio of equally sick warlords, indulging their venal desires and lording over the populace with the support of their brainwashed Warboys, a cult of gleeful warriors exalting in the chance to sacrifice themselves in the most lavishly destructive ways possible.

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Fans of Hardy's "look, Mum, I'm doing a voice" style of acting will be pleased to hear that even though he says about five words he comes up with another corker of an accent, communicating in a sort of growly mumble halfway between a V8 engine and Milton from "Office Space." Nicholas Hoult is in top form as a Warboy desperate to win his corrupt leader's favour, while Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoe Kravitz, Riley Keough and Abbey Lee provide the film's heart as a harem of desert dryads.

But truly this is Theron's film: she's spellbinding as the grizzled warrior fighting tooth-and-nail to survive -- and maybe even find meaning in this mad world.

It's a world in which it's not just "guzzle-ine" that's fought over, but the very fluids of life: water. Blood. Mother's milk. "Fury Road" is a beautifully realised vision of the post-apocalyptic future, filmed in Namibia but looking like another planet. The screen explodes with the fevered imaginings of a civilisation with no past and no future. From the Warboys' twisted cult, to the grotesque denizens each more bizarre than the last, to the crazy vehicles including a Slipknot concert on 18 wheels, "Fury Road" is packed with surreal detail. Even the character names alone are a treat: Rictus Erectus, Toast the Knowing, The Splendid Angharad, Cheedo the Fragile, The Doof Warrior and many more.

"Fury Road" is movie-making madness to the max. Road rage never looked so good.

"Mad Max: Fury Road" crashes into theatres on 14 May in the UK and Australia and 15 May in the US.