MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (Rated R)

The original “Mad Max” film gave Mel Gibson his big start on the road to stardom.

George Miller, a medical doctor by profession, proved to be an excellent director, launching a career that has now come full circle with “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

To put everything into perspective, when “Mad Max” debuted in 1979, malaise gripped America, radical mullahs took over Iran with the Islamic revolution, and the Soviet Union was only months away from invading Afghanistan.

With its emphasis on a desolate future, this dystopian action film seemed like a good fit for the era.

Now 36 years later, “Mad Max: Fury Road” may be tapping into the zeitgeist once again.

But Mel Gibson has been replaced by Tom Hardy, who’s wearing an iron mask that is reminiscent of his appearance as Bane in “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Best of all, George Miller, the mastermind of the post-apocalyptic worldview, still has a vivid imagination.

The future is bleak in George Miller’s world, a chaotic place, where there is no rule of law, no power grids, no water, and no mercy.

Once the battle was only for oil, not it’s just a matter of survival. Life on this forbidding planet is nasty, brutish and short.

Water is the key to power wielded by the maniac tyrant Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played the psychotic Toecutter in the original “Mad Max”).

The Citadel, a fortress spun into a cave system where water is pumped from the only aquifer for miles around, is like a chamber of horrors for the unfortunate.

What’s left of humanity roams the Wasteland in wild tribes or clings to survival at the foot of the Citadel, where the desert warlord favors his War Boys, pasty-white creatures fueled by constant blood transfusions and a diet of mother’s milk.

As the film opens, Tom Hardy’s Max Rockatansky (the same name for Mel Gibson’s character) is a veteran of some desert war with a skill set that allows him to survive alone. He’s a wanderer in search of an idealistic place that no longer exists.

Ambushed by a wild pack of marauding War Boys, Max is dragged back to the Citadel, the most fortified stronghold in the Wasteland, where his fate is to become a source of blood transfusion for Immortan Joe’s zombie-like army.

It’s at the Citadel that we meet Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a shaved-head female warrior who is tasked with driving the War Rig to Gas Town, flanked by an armada of super-charged vintage muscle cars and trucks converted to armored vehicles.

Suddenly, Furiosa detours her rig and her convoy off their scheduled run, and it becomes clear she has a different agenda. Immortan’s kingdom erupts into bedlam.

Furiosa’s War Rig carries the precious cargo of the tyrant’s five wives, each one a sex slave prized for breeding purposes to produce a male heir.

Meanwhile, since Max is now an unwilling blood donor hooked up to warrior Nux (Hicholas Hoult), our hero is strapped to the front end of the car that Nux drives in pursuit of the wayward Furiosa.

Not long after the first run, things happen to make Max and Furiosa guarded allies as they flee for the mythical sanctuary of the Green Place.

While George Miller may be philosophical about the idea driving his “Mad Max” franchise being attributed to “Alfred Hitchcock’s notion about making films that can be watched anywhere in the world without subtitles,” the essence of “Fury Road” is action so intense that dialogue is a mere afterthought, and even when there are spoken words, it’s mostly in the service of driving the mayhem.

Dialogue is so minimal that Max never even utters his own name until late in the movie’s run. He’s like the Man with No Name in the spaghetti westerns, which seems appropriate to the desert wasteland that is the backdrop for what is essentially a non-stop road warrior chase.

Imagery is a key element. A symbolic leafless tree stands alone in the desolate sands. A monstrous, sweeping sandstorm decimates the landscape. Every detail from the gadgets attached to the pursuing vehicles to the armaments used by the warriors is a visual treat.

In pursuit of Max and Furiosa, some of the War Boys catapult on bending poles from their vehicles in attack mode, while others frantically beat war drums.

The high-octane Road War is orchestrated by a dude swinging from a bungee cord as he shreds metal and flame from a double-necked electric guitar-cum-flamethrower.

“Fury Road” unfolds in near-constant action, with only a few breaks to allow everyone to catch their collective breath.

Tom Hardy has nailed the role of the road warrior Max, but he’s eclipsed by Charlize Theron’s superior portrayal of Furiosa, a feminist icon for a dismal age.

George Miller has gone into overdrive to deliver an exciting, action-packed road thriller.

To be sure, “Mad Max: Fury Road” has plenty of action violence, some of it graphic, but all of it necessary to drive the plot.

George Miller has a great bag of tricks that make this installment a most worthy component of the venerable franchise. 

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.