Wow.

If ever a one-word review applies to a movie, this is it.  Wow.  I had some serious misgivings about this movie, being a big fan of both The Road Warrior and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.  Whatever.  Director George Miller has resurrected Max, the post-apocalyptic cult hero, with glorious results.

It took a while for me to get into this adventure, which seems like a cross between the aforementioned Road Warrior and Thunderdome scenarios.  Max (Tom Hardy) is as enigmatic as ever, but this time he’s matched by Imperator Furiosa (the great Charlize Theron), whose life mission overrides Max’s own instincts for survival and provides all the good guys and gals with what amounts to a sacred duty.

Miller directs the mayhem with astonishing immediacy and omnipresent peril.  The film is essentially one long chase sequence, punctuated by periods of down time so that the machines and cast can rest a bit.  But in the middle of all the choreographed chaos, in spite of all the destruction and malevolence, a thread of hope appears, and it is this hope, clung to by Furiosa and eventually supported by Max, that drives the story to its conclusion.

Fury Road is wonderfully wild, grandly operatic when it needs to be, and entertaining as can be.  Charlize Theron deserves another Oscar for her work here, and Nicholas Hoult is superb as Nux.  Hardy is a fine replacement for Mel Gibson, who after all is nearing sixty, and too old for the role now.  I didn’t think Miller would be able to even approach the greatness of The Road Warrior, much less surpass it, but I was wrong. This is a great movie.  ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆.  18 May 2015.