Whether or not Miller was aware of these unspoken conventions, he has ploughed a blazing petrol tanker right through the middle of them. What compounds the fun is Fury Road’s wholesale rejection of the generally accepted blockbuster code of conduct, which dictates that expensive films have to be marketable to teenagers but still watchable by eight-year-olds in order to maximise box-office returns. But when they are, and it works – what a rush. Most films aren’t built this way for all kinds of sensible reasons. The first point at which Fury Road draws breath – an eerily beautiful wide shot of a flare spluttering out in the desert darkness – comes after half an hour of virtually continuous chaos. Enraged, Immortan leads the charge to bring them back. Understandably, the wives aren’t keen, so they escape in the belly of a petrol tanker on a routine supply run. Its ruler, Immortan Joe (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, whom Mad Max fans may just about recognise, behind the make-up and skull mask, as the original film’s Toecutter), has five 'wives' locked in a tower with whom he hopes to conceive, by force, a healthy son and heir. The film begins with Max, who’s now played by Tom Hardy, becoming mixed up in a jailbreak from a desert citadel.

Warner Bros/Village Roadshow Films/Jasin Boland Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe in 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Credit: With its spare dialogue and dazzlingly choreographed and edited stunts, Miller’s film often feels like a great silent movie – albeit a very loud one. The result is less John Ford than Buster Keaton – specifically, the comedian's 1926 masterpiece The General, with its madcap there-and-back-again pursuit up and down 150 miles of railway track. Its climactic 20-minute chase scene – a still-perfect symphony of fireballs, barrel rolls and severed heads – plays like a gonzo rehash of the Native American pursuit that closes John Ford’s Stagecoach.įury Road goes even further: the film is almost nothing but chase, with each high-octane action sequence shunting into the next at breakneck speed. That film was a western from hell, in which Mel Gibson’s Max Rockatansky, scrabbling for survival in a future world blighted by drought and fuel shortages, helps defend a remote oil refinery from a band of marauders. The director last visited this world in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome in 1985, but this feels more like a spiritual sequel to The Road Warrior, the far superior 1981 instalment. Miller's long-delayed return to the Mad Max series, which has its European premiere at the Cannes Film Festival later this week, is nothing less than a Krakatoan eruption of craziness. Mad Max: Fury Road is the first film from George Miller since 2011’s dancing penguins cartoon Happy Feet Two, and his first live-action project since 1998’s Babe: Pig in the City.

Mad max fury road rating