Currently sitting at 99% on Rotten Tomatoes – Mad Max: Fury Road – believe the hype, it’s everything that the trailers promised and more. From the start the pedal is down and it doesn’t let up for the first 30 minutes as characters and chases are thrown at you relentlessly with little or no knowledge of who or why. Not that it’s hard to work out but it’s refreshing that there’s no pandering to the audience and little dialogue so keep up at the back there or become road kill.

The film looks stunning, worn, gritty, dirty, it would probably smell of sweat, piss and engine oil too if it was in smell-o-vision. The vehicle and character design is out of this world, taking its cues from British artist and co-writer Brendan McCarthy‘s early concepts and superbly translating them onto the screen. Imagine the 2nd and 3rd Mad Max films with bigger budgets and the colour saturation turned up. The yellow, rust and orange palette of the posters radiates out of the screen, forget those sepia-toned initial press shots that were photo-shopped to within an inch of their life and made it look cold and windy, the film blazes as hot as fire.

The vehicles, machines and stunts are said to be 90% real with little cgi and it shows. You’re more aware of what was taken out than what was added – the safety ropes on the multiple stuntmen flying through the air in most scenes and half of Charlize Theron‘s arm as she sports a stump with robotic arm. Not that it’s ever explained or even matters how this came to be, like most of the look of the film, it simply looks cool and adds to several different moments that would have played differently had she been fully able-bodied.

Theron is actually the star of the film, a physical match for Max, a better shot and a she saves his arse at least as many times as he does hers. She’s the Tank Girl we never got 20 years back and thankfully there’s no unnecessary romance, more a grudging respect, the Future may belong to the Mad as the posters proclaim but the film belongs to her. Tom Hardy is decent as Max but with maybe a pages worth of dialogue he doesn’t have the impact he could have had and when he does speak his accent wavers from Aussie to.. I’m not entirely sure, he doesn’t seem to make up his mind. It’s a small gripe as he looks the part and certainly kicks enough arse to make Mel Gibson look like a wimp although it’s not in comparison I’d want to make, Hardy plays Max differently that’s all.

Other small gripes, the music is uneven, either overplayed in the few sentimental scenes or not rawk-ous enough in some of the chases where a blind guitarist swings on bungee ropes whilst thrashing out riffs to motivate the War Boys into battle. I had visions of Marilyn Manson‘s ‘The Beautiful People’ as being the perfect soundtrack for some of the scenes, short, sharp shocks metered out to a marching band glam beat. Again though, small gripes.

As exhilarating rides go the first and last acts are flawless examples of fast-paced, relentlessly brutal roller coasters that will take some beating. There’s a fragmented and slightly baggy middle to the film including night scenes in blacks and blues that contrast nicely with the oranges and yellows of the day. I’m hoping that the film will inspire a whole new generation of artists, film-makers and writers in the same way that the originals did, spawning a host of copycats as well as pushing some of Hollywood to follow suit and back away from heavy CGIwork.

I saw it at the IMAX in 3D (thankfully used sparingly here) and enjoyed it’s use far more than in The Avengers where it felt forced in every scene. I ducked at least once as things flew at the screen and only one scene gratuitously played to the effect, tellingly one of the only obvious CGI moments it must be noted. Go and see it, it’s worth every penny, ‘More Please’ Mr George Miller.