What a way for the world to end

Charlize Theron fights Tom Hardy in "Mad Max: Fury Road."

“Mad Max: Fury Road” is a freaking brilliant film. It's impossibly large, undeniably epic, impressively progressive, and a rather strange duck of an action film that depicting a land of nightmares wrought by a world controlled by avarice and short-sightedness.

Most importantly, it's just so much fun to watch the chaos unfurl.

This is the fourth film in director George Miller's “Mad Max” series, and it begins with old friend and eponymous rover “Mad” Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy, inheriting Mel Gibson's role) haunted by memories amid the sands of time. He's caught by a collection of bandits ruled by brutal, deformed tyrant Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and becomes an unwilling blood donor to one of Keays-Byrne's so-called War Boys, Nux (Nicholas Hoult).

The action really kicks off when five members of the overlord's harem (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoë Kravitz, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee and Courtney Eaton) escape with the help of truck driver Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who drives eastward toward the proverbial Promised Land. An epic chase ensues in which Keays-Byrne unleashes his warriors and allies, forcing Hardy and the women to forge an uneasy alliance to escape the devil's wraith.

“Fury Road” is astounding spectacle, a film that turns up the action to 11, then somehow finds even more levels beyond that. Bodies are launched all over creation amid radically souped-up cars and trucks torn apart by spears filled with explosives and crash in the desert. Amid the carnage is a band of drummers that creates an atavistic aura emphasizing how the on-screen insanity reflects humanity diving into its most ugliest, most primal survival tactics. Also, there's a guys standing on top of a truck playing a guitar that shoots out flames, which is just as awesome as it sounds.

Awesome, encapsulated.

I'd like “Fury Road” if that's all it was; it's pretty much the same reason why I have a perpetual soft spot for the “Furious” films. But the mayhem orchestrated magnificently by Miller on screen is buttressed by a wonderful script (partially credited to Miller) highlighted by both its storytelling simplicity and its thematic complexity.

“Fury Road” is a pretty straightforward film; the plot is a two-hour car chase and the divide between the heroes and villains is demarcated clearly. It also contains a dearth of dialogue, which makes every word uttered significant while adding depth to what isn't verbally stated. The truce between Hardy, Theron, the five harem members, for example, isn't agreed upon via discussion; rather, the agreement is reached by the fulfillment of mutual needs and the actions the parties involved engage in to reinforce it.

What makes the decision easier is the shared sense of hope the heroic characters share. The meaning of hope differs from one character to the next, yet the base idea for it separates them from the relentless pursuers intent on maintaining a hell on earth in which such ideas are effectively heresy. In other words, the Warrior Boys and their leader are satisfied with survival, while Theron and her crew want a more fecund, prosperous world.

Women are the heart of and the most important characters in “Fury Road,” a point emphasized by Theron’s role as the film’s protagonist. She’s the one charged with protecting the world’s future, and it’s Theron’s Furiosa who takes down the prominent enemies on screen. Hardy does cause his fair share of destruction, but his most prominent moment occurs off screen, hidden amid a miasma of dust and uncertainty in his survival. Miller makes it clear that Theron is the more capable driver and the better shot, as shown by a scene in which she takes away Hardy's gun to shoot a pursuer, a powerful symbolic gesture.

Siggy would approve.

 Hardy’s Max, then, is Theron’s sidekick, a secondary character in his own film. It’s an unorthodox strategy, but a necessary one that continues Max’s role as a folk hero, a legend among the survivors of the end of the world. The “Mad Max” films are an anthology, a collection of legends told akin to Greek mythology that use Max as the common denominator.

Definitely heady stuff to conjure, and there's way more to unpack in “Fury Road” than gender politics and how a man becomes a legend; fortunately, that gives me an excuse to watch it a few more times. That, and the guitar flamethrower.

Review: Five out of Five Stars (Note: I added a half star after a second viewing)

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 120 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: Series enthusiast and anyone into excellent action films.

Take the whole family?: Only if you want to traumatize your kiddos.

Theater or Netflix?: Really, really worth the big-screen experience. It's such an enormous film that watching it small doesn't do it justice.

What does one make of George Miller's career?:  You're not going to find many filmmakers with a background quite as eclectic as his. He earned a spot in the action-film pantheon thanks to the “Mad Max” series, but he drifted away from the genre for 30 years and filled that stretch with family films (two “Happy Feet” flicks and “Babe: Pig in the City,”) the dramatic and underappreciated “Lorenzo's Oil,” and the bizarre comedy “The Witches of Eastwick.” A little strange for sure, yet he's done quite well across all platforms and has established a habit of showcasing interesting, well-developed female characters that stretches to “Fury Road.”

Watch this as well?: Definitely “Mad Max” and “The Road Warrior” to become a little more familiar with the eponymous character (I haven't seen “Beyond Thunderdome,” so no opinion either way). I'm going to add in a viewing of “Bronson” to the mix, which features both a terrific Tom Hardy performance and some disturbing acts of wanton violence.

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