Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Plot summary (story synopsis): Mad Max (Tom Hardy) is kidnapped by Immortan Joe's (Hugh Keays-Byrne) band of crazy war boys. He is taken back to their rock fortress in the middle of the desert and used as a living blood bag to provide nourishment to their warriors. 

Immortan Joe's trusted lieutenant Furiosa (Charlize Theron) leads a routine raid to steal petrol but has other plans. Hidden in her empty tanker are Immortan Joe's slave wives. Furiosa plans to save them, and their unborn children from becoming Immortan Joe's future war boys.

Immortan Joe goes all out to catch Furiosa, leading the chase vehicles himself. Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of the war boys, aims to catch Furiosa and claim glory and immortal life from Immortan Joe.

Nux takes Max as his blood bag and chains him to the front of his car. The ridiculous convoy of scrap-yard Frankenstein vehicles chases Furiosa down Fury Road. 

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Fury Road looks like a shallow action movie but it's much more than that. The schoolboy-glee with which writer/director George Miller lovingly plays with the crazy souped-up vehicles, their medieval contraptions, and the crazy action stunts, hides a more serious intent.

Fury road is a millieu movie, not a plot or character movie. The star is its post-apocalyptic world, the various quirky bands of people (and their quirkier vehicles) living out in the desert in a fallen world. Especially Immortan Joe's militarized dictatorship and the religion he created around the old Norse legend of Valhalla, to keep his war boys loyal to him.

After the second Mad Max movie (the first wasn't a big hit, the one with Tina Turner is the third movie), the term Mad Max (or Road Warrior) was used to describe a specific type of post-apocalyptic scenario, so much did the movies define our vision of violent gangs taking over after civilizational collapse. 

And what a millieu it is. The wacky warriors and their vehicles are fleshed out in loving detail. And they don't just look good, they work well too. The movie is maybe 60 percent running battles between the war boys and Furiosa and Max. We see how their medieval punk weaponry works in glorious state-of-the-art stunt live-action. 

We do get numb to all the flat-out action after a while. The action sequences should have been edited down more ruthlessly. But overall they are a raging success.  

Hidden amongst all the action is a subtle show-don't-tell exploration of Immortan Joe's Valhalla religion through the exploits of Nux. The movie is more about him than about Max or Furiosa. Though he looks like a comedic sidekick, he actually has the best character arc in the whole movie.

Furiosa and Max are the heroes but they don't change much. They are only there to drive the action. Max's flashbacks about not saving the kids, are an obviously contrived device to give his character some depth.

Max disappears at the end of the movie. In victory, he leaves Furiosa and goes on alone to his next adventure in the next episode of the Mad Max franchise. He is the enigmatic reluctant hero, the faceless man. The Mad Max movies are not about Mad Max. As explained earlier, the term Mad Max in popular culture refers to Max's post-apocalyptic world, not Max. This is world-building at its finest.

Witness!