Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) – IMDb: 8.1

Release Date: May 15, 2015
Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Director: George Miller
Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult

Mad Max: Fury Road is a high-octane masterpiece set in a dystopian wasteland ruled by warlords and chaos. Tom Hardy stars as Max Rockatansky, a lone survivor caught in a relentless chase led by Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who seeks to rescue a group of enslaved women and reclaim her freedom.

The film is a visual and narrative tour de force, with breathtaking practical effects, explosive action sequences, and a powerful feminist undertone. Charlize Theron’s portrayal of Furiosa stands as one of the most compelling characters in action cinema, and George Miller’s direction elevates the film into a timeless classic.

Good action direction is its own beast, a delicate balance of choreography, cinematography and editing that usually has two distinct goals: be exciting and be coherent. Those goals can be at odds, of course, as the more frantic and fast-paced an action sequence gets, the more likely it is to lose the viewer. 2002 was a watershed year for the actioner with the release of The Bourne Identity, which sported a super-fast-cutting editing style that worked brilliantly in its best moments; Bourne Supremacy, the sequel, doubled-down on this technique and arguably set the bar even higher than its predecessor.

But many of the films that aped Bourne in the ensuing years failed to balance those two goals, resulting in messy fight scenes and chase sequences that were hard to follow. Heck, there are even a few moments in the trilogy-capping Bourne Ultimatum that lose the thread of logic in their haste.