'Mad' to the max: Rebooted classic a crazy one for the ladies, earns 4 stars

This retina-wrecking, eardrum-pounding apocalyptic thriller plays like a feral, futuristic sequel in the "Fast and Furious" franchise with its wonderfully tricked-out and incredibly fast vehicles, bombastically improbable stunts and simple, survival-motivated characters.

George Miller's reboot of his own 1979 Australian sci-fi revenge tale "Mad Max" does nothing less than redefine the "action film" label and sets the bar so high for the genre that, like Miller's seminal 1981 sequel "The Road Warrior," its future imitators - and there could be many - will never be able to match it.

I don't mean to go full-tilt cinema geek here, but Miller's "Mad Max: Fury Road" (not a reference to Nick Fury from the Marvel Comics universe) resonates with classic epics from the distant past.

The opening scenes of Miller's world of red sand and redder blood in a place called "the Citadel" play out like a primitive version of Fritz Lang's 1927 futuristic "Metropolis" with white-powdered workers running like hamsters in a treadmill to power up a steam-punked system of pulleys and ropes for the benefit of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, from the original "Mad Max"), a dictator resembling a mashup of Batman's Bane, Darth Vader and King Henry VIII.

Later, as the action segues into desert canyons and surrealist rock formations, "Fury Road" astonishes us with landscapes in the same way the magnificent, breathtaking settings of Monument Valley wowed audiences in John Ford's 1939 western "Stagecoach."

Then, the numerous chases and frantic fights on wheels make for terrific theater the same way the violent, spectacular chariot races did in "Ben-Hur" (either the 1925 silent version or the 1959 remake).

Most surprising, Miller's titular hero, played with brawn and depth by Tom Hardy, taking over the role that made Mel Gibson into an international superstar, is almost a supporting character here.

A sweaty, buzz-cut Charlize Theron, missing an arm and a Hollywood superstar's ego, plays Imperator Furiosa, a fierce warrior and a war-rig driver for Immortan Joe. She, not Hardy's Max, serves as the driving force for this simple plot of escape and survival as she strives to find a sanctuary she calls "the green place."

With nary more than a few sentences of voice-over narration to set up the plot, Max becomes a tortured prisoner of Immortan Joe's violent enforcers, the War Boys.

They chain Max, wearing a steel version of a Hannibal Lecter anti-biting grill, onto the front of a truck pursuing the war-rig driven by Furiosa, who has broken from the ranks and tries to escape with four of Immortan Joe's abused wives, one of them, Splendid (real-life model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), about to give birth.

The dictator calls up his relatives, leaders of other warring factions, and gives chase, which pretty much becomes the movie's raison d'être.

Except that this chase leaves "The Road Warrior" and its cinematic spawn in the crimson dust. This insanely staged, wildly choreographed nuttiness offers up crazy stunts impossible to believe, yet anchored in such organic realism that we never question what we witness - bodies flying in the air, War Boys using vaulting poles to board speeding vehicles like pirates boarding enemy ships traveling at 100 miles an hour.

After a brief period of distrust, Max and Furiosa become quick partners against Immortan Joe. Even one of Joe's soldiers, the white-faced Nux with scary lips (Nicholas Hoult), joins the good guys in a story with more shifting alliances than in a game of Risk.

One problem that Miller doesn't solve here also plagued "The Road Warrior." If the people in this world are so starved for fuel, why do all the vehicles appear to have unlimited supplies of it?

Not a single engine runs out of petrol. We never see an abandoned car or truck.

I know, it's just a movie, and this one comes equipped with a bleating, throbbing score by Junkie XL who slightly overdoses on over-the-top symphonic swells.

But these are mere quibbles in a motion picture that breaks new ground.

Not just the red-colored ground, but the action movie ground, once the supreme propriety domain of maleness that Miller, at age 70, has slyly handed to women heroes in a reboot that could have easily been titled "Mad Maxine."

“Mad Max Fury Road”

★ ★ ★ ★

Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoe Kravitz

Directed by: George Miller

Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rate R for violence. 120 minutes.