MAD MAX : FURY ROAD - Saturday 16th May 2015.

After an absence of thirty years Max Rockatansky is back with a bigger, bolder, budget busting effort by Director and originator George Miller once again at the helm in this fourth instalment in the franchise. 'MAD MAX : FURY ROAD' hit our screens only this week with all the anticipation and hype associated with this long awaited cult series follow-up. Having spent the last twenty or so years in development hell, the notion for a script had been locked away in Millers head for a very long time but global events, location shooting, studio changes, the political landscape and even the weather all conspired to create delay after delay. Finally with the green light switched on filming started shooting in Namibia in mid-2012 and US$150M later the film is here . . . finally!

The Mad Max back catalogue is impressive enough to warrant all the hype about this cult film series that began way back in 1979, with the release of 'Mad Max' with a young fresh faced Mel Gibson in the title role as our titular hero and damaged police patrol cop. That film was made for just AU$400K and grossed over US$100M at the global Box Office, and for many years until 1999 stood as the most commercially successful film of all time on a dollar for dollar basis, until the release of 'The Blair Witch Project'. 'Mad Max : The Road Warrior' was released in 1981 with Mel Gibson again starring, and generated US$40M+ including after sales off a US$4.5M budget. 1985 saw the last instalment up to now ' Mad Max : Beyond Thunderdome' with Mel Gibson again, and Tina Turner acting and singing the title track,  with US$36M+ from an initial US$12M budget - the most lacklustre of the series thus far.

I can remember watching 'Mad Max' and 'Mad Max : The Road Warrior' back to back in a special double bill feature at the Odeon Leicester Square in London in about 1983, and being stunned by the story, the visuals, the energy of these films and the benchmark set for all such future dystopian post-apocalyptic offerings. And, so I went in to see 'Mad Max : Fury Road' last night with high expectations, and I have to say came out feeling a little underwhelmed.

Tom Hardy now takes on the lead role as Max Rockatansky and he does a solid enough job as a broken man whose only instinct now is to 'survive' by any means necessary. We are set about 45 years after the world has gone belly up and everything is scarce - food, water, oil and fuel and humans prey on humans at just about every turn. The last vestiges of any form of civilisation seem to have been long gone, leaving only now a dystopian disfigured downtrodden population all vying for the new world currency - water, fuel and bullets - all of which are in short supply. Out in the desert 'The Citadel' looms large as an oasis of rock, water supply, greenery and a burgeoning diseased population overseen by tyrannical leader King Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also played 'The Toecuter' in 1979's 'Mad Max'). His followers are 'The War Boys' who capture Max early on, keep him locked up in a cage, tattoo his back and designate him a universal blood donor. Max is a brooding fractured man of very few words and says little throughout the film - letting his actions clearly speak louder!

Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) drives a heavily armoured War Rig to collect gasoline and other supplies for Joe from nearby settlements - Gas Town and Bullet Farm - and so heads off on her regular supply trip with outriders for protection. En route it is revealed that Furiosa is carrying 'The Five Wives' - five young beautiful girls who are Joe's breeding stock, and one is heavily pregnant with his child. Furiosa makes a decision to head off track to seek safe haven far way to 'The Green Place' across the treacherous 'Wasteland' but is quickly pursued by Joe and his entire army of War Boys when the truth is made known to him.

What follows on is a film dominated by several extended chase sequences across the barren landscape of the desert as Max at first is strapped to the front of a vehicle by Nux (Nicholas Hoult) in hot pursuit of the War Rig, all the while drip feeding his precious blood supply to a dying Nux back in the cab behind the wheel of his menacing souped up heavily armed dune bashing vehicle. Eventually after much death, destruction and vehicular mayhem the War Rig continues its journey leaving a crashed Nux & Max and countless others buried in a sand dune somewhere still shackled together. When Max comes round he spies the War Rig in the distance and begins his journey on foot, carrying a seemingly dead Nux on his back, because the two are still chained. After a fist fight with Furiosa and now Nux who has regained consciousness, Max takes the vehicle leaving the girls behind, with Joe's army in the hazy distance heading towards them still in pursuit.

It's not long before the girls catch-up given that Furiosa has several 'kill-switches' installed inside the rig to prevent such eventualities, and so Max has little choice but to take them on board and to get the hell outta Dodge before them pesky varmint War Boys descend again! And so of course this leads to the next high octane set piece that sees Joe and his War Boys nudge ever closer through a canyon as Furiosa seeks safe passage in exchange for a payload of gasoline to the keepers of the canyon pass. Blocking further passage of the War Boys behind them through an orchestrated rock fall, the War Rig heads off but not before Joe in his 4WD Monster Truck is able to scale the rock slide and head off in pursuit once more, joined this time by the canyon dwellers who have just seen their fuel payload go up in billowing black smoke!

And so the journey continues with more car-nage, more death, more destruction and more vehicular mayhem as cars, trucks and bikes crash out in spectacular fashion, bodies are flung far & wide, fist fights and close quarter attacks take place at 120 MPH atop those rigs & trucks, and flames and smoke billow out of exhaust systems as every inch of acceleration is sought to gain the upper hand.

It's much the same as we saw in the opening sequence except a different location this time, and then when the dust settles we get some reprieve from the fast paced action as Max, Furiosa, Nux and the now Four Wives all spend a little time getting acquainted and start to bond. This is the obligatory calm before the storm before the final set piece where all Hell will let lose as Joe musters every last vehicle and every last War Boy to retrieve his remaining breeders and dispense with Furiosa and Max. As Furiosa drives on they arrive at a place she recognises and states her affiliation to a clan where she used to live with her mother. From here they decide to abandon the truck and head across the salt plains to another place and sanctuary beyond they believe . . . but it is a 160 day journey which they will have to do on motorbike. They head off, leaving Max behind of his own choice. Considering his fate, he follows on a motorbike to catch them up revealing a plan to return to The Citadel where they can begin afresh with clean water and a new life in safety. They agree, and so retrace their steps in the War Rig.

Of course, it is not long before they come head to head with Joe and his War Boys and so it's on again for young & old and more well choreographed vehicular stunt work as more cars, trucks, bikes of every description collide, get overturned, get burned out, flipped, nudged, shunted and ground down into the desert dust before our heroes arrive back at The Citadel - although they have paid a price! It is all very well executed and deftly handled to deliver road movie carnage to this level with expert practical stunt work combined with cutting edge CGI, but by the third set piece and relentless chase sequences it all begins to get a little predictable and a little wearing I found.

I couldn't really warm to Tom Hardy's Max as I did with Mel Gibson's but maybe it is just because now after all these years in the wilderness Hardy's Max is more grizzled, emotionally bereft, and has witnessed more death, destruction and loss than he would care to remember which causes him to experience visions of past memories he would rather forget! That said I question too why such a group would go through so much adversity, conflict, terror and danger along their journey, only to turn around and go back from whence they came, knowing that they may not even make it given what they know lies in front of them! And the action set pieces as good and as convincing as they are just dominate the film from end to end in seemingly never ending road rage written on the grandest scale - I was getting bored toward the end of the monotony and repetition of I was seeing - surely there are only so many ways to skin a cat! I was looking for a little more depth, more character development (although perhaps Miller assumes we know Max's back story - but what happened in the intervening years I wonder, and what about Furiosa too) and perhaps an insight in to the world as it now is and how The Citadel came to be.

At the time of writing 'Mad Max : Fury Road' had grossed US$27M with largely very positive reviews, but for me the jury is out and for the reasons stated above I was a little underwhelmed by it all. I shall probably go see it again to satisfy myself that my views expressed here are validated. I have no doubt that this film will do well enough catering for a whole new audience not familiar with Miller's three previous Mad Max outings, its young adult action appeal, the pedigree of its predecessors and the stylised video game action sequences. See it for yourself on the big screen and you decide, and then let me know what you thought.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-