4.5/5 stars
George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga arrives with all the force of a megaton bomb.
With Road Warrior Max Rockatansky absent entirely here, this switch to a female-driven vehicle may be a gear change for Miller’s franchise, but you will hardly notice.
The action is as bombastic as in Fury Road, with the added bonus of Chris Hemsworth as the antagonist, Dementus, a bearded gang leader who is vying with Fury Road’s hulking Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) for control of The Wasteland, the desert-scape where food, water and fuel are in desperately short supply.
Early on, the young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) is captured by Dementus and she suffers the horror of seeing her mother killed in front of her. Refusing to say where the land of abundance is that she comes from, it is only when Dementus attempts to bargain with Immortan Joe that she speaks up.
Soon she is part of his harem, but the only thing on her mind is vengeance and taking Dementus down.
Divided into five chapters, this Mad Max story takes us to compounds including Gastown and the abandoned lead mine known as the Bullet Farm, as well as returning to The Citadel, ruled over by Immortan Joe.
Once again, Jenny Beavan’s costumes and Colin Gibson’s sets are simply stunning, truly capturing this world of decay and devastation. Likewise, Simon Duggan’s cinematography perfectly captures the beauty amid the horror.
As for the action, the stunt work is every bit as insane as in Fury Road, from a staggering sequence where a vehicular war rig is attacked aerially to a thrilling, sniper-led shoot-out at the Bullet Farm.
But it is the little moments that really sell the film. A lizard pops out of a skull before it is crushed to death by a monster vehicle; a hairpiece falls onto a branch, which grows and sprouts leaves, shown using time-lapse photography to mark Furiosa’s transition from youngster to young warrior.
Hemsworth steals the show and almost outmuscles Taylor-Joy, who is near-silent for much of the film; he is joined by British actor Tom Burke, sublime as Furiosa’s mentor Praetorian Jack – a character standing in for Mad Max.
Together, they stand tall in this blockbuster for the ages.