Mad Max: Fury Road

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: George Miller.

Cast: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne.

Bathurst was off the hook this year.

WHEN Tina Turner sang We Don't Need Another Hero in Beyond Thunderdome it sounded like an effective sign-off for the Mad Max series. And despite the fact we didn't need another Max Max movie, we have one.

Thankfully it's awesome, combining the best elements of all three previous films - the ominous atmosphere of the first movie, the exhilarating and intense action of the second one, and the larger world-building and end-of-days ramifications of Beyond Thunderdome.

At its core, Fury Road is basically a two-hour-long stunt-heavy chase sequence, with small amounts of plot and a bare minimum of character development eked out along the way.

We're reintroduced to Max (with Tom Hardy more than adequately filling Mel Gibson's dust-covered boots) in the post-apocalyptic desert, haunted by his past and those he couldn't save.

Captured by the despotic warlord Immortan Joe (Keays-Byrne), Max is forced into servitude as a "blood bag" for one of his warriors (Hoult) and sent off into battle to hunt Furiosa (Theron), who has fled with five of Joe's wives.

What follows is the very definition of an action movie. It's white-knuckle, edge-of-your-seat, strap-in-and-feel-the-Gs film-making that whirs by refreshingly quick in a blur of dirt, flame, and flying car parts.

There's a fear that such an endeavour could become repetitive, given that it's chase after chase after chase, but somehow it doesn't. The strange relationship (which is largely unspoken) between Furiosa and Max helps build some effective quiet moments, without ever letting the intensity slide.

In these lulls we also get a greater understanding of the dead future Miller has been hinting at since Max first fired up the Pursuit Special in 1979 - it's an apocalypse that makes the one in The Road look like a holiday park.

Miller reportedly didn't bother with a script first and instead just made a bunch of storyboards, which shows. The film is not big on dialogue but manages to say a lot without saying much, which is refreshing (although some will complain that we don't get enough of an idea about the characters).

Fury Road is largely about the visuals - of stunningly designed Franken-vehicles, of mind-blowing practical stunts, of blown-out colours and slowed-down frame rates that accentuate the incredibly staged set-pieces.

There are some strange moments, such as the way the truck noises disappear during some conversations or how the accents are all over the shop (isn't this set in Australia?), and admittedly this is not going to be to all tastes, nor is it terribly cerebral film-making.

But this will surely please action aficionados and fans of the previous films, and it could be the best non-superhero action movie of the past decade.