Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: George Miller
    Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, Nicholas Hoult,
    Hugh Keays-Byrne, Josh Helman, Nathan Jones,
    Zoë Kravitz, Rose Huntington-Whiteley, Abbey Lee,
    Riley Keough, Courtney Eaton, John Howard
All-terrain vehicles in various exotic shapes and sizes zip all over a vast desert landscape, while their drivers and passengers devise ever more creative ways to dismember each other. This movie is all mayhem, no plot, or at least not much of one. Miller cuts to the chase almost immediately, and that's basically the movie. Tom Hardy has none of the charismatic craziness Mel Gibson brought to the previous Mad Max films. Fortunately, he's sharing the screen and the crash-and-burn action with Charlize Theron as an amazon warrior with a buzz cut, a prosthetic left arm and a name any amazon who knew her Latin would kill for: Imperator Furiosa. Which she is. Miller's vision of post-apocalyptic future at times suggests Fellini, but the pace is so hectic and the storytelling's so minimal, you don't always know for sure who's getting chased, or killed, or why. Charlize Theron, though, yeah, as female action figures go, she's the real deal. If Miller decides to revisit this hellhole yet again - and apparently he does - he'd be smart to bring back the one-armed, tight-lipped, cold-eyed, buzz-cut Furiosa.