A franchise reboot (or extension) that follows 30 years on from a series of post-apocalyptic films that started with an ill-behaved, nasty little revenge movie (but with some room for emotional investment) with a climax that explained how Max became Mad before we got two self-contained Hollywood-ised action adventures (the PG-13-rated Beyond The Thunderdome recalling Indiana Jones's Temple Of Doom and coming out the most family-friendly, despite a cheeky F-bomb) in which Max seemed the most sane whereas humanity had descended into chaos. Here, it's slightly less well-behaved than Beyond The Thunderdome and we're back in R-rated territory and, even if adolescent in tone, it's more in line with The Road Warrior and is also the first installment since the original to bring up the subject of Max's state of mind (thanks to voices in his head and quickly-cut flashbacks). Essentially a 90-minute film stretched out to two hours, (perhaps in part owing to some interminable chasing), it exchanges the minimal locations of the previous sequels for the open road as Max (Tom Hardy) teams up with "Imperiotor Furiosa" (Charlize Theron channeling Sigourney Weaver as Ripley) to protect a group of "babes" (including a surprisingly quite good Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) in an exodus to the promised land. There is almost nothing for any newcomers unfamiliar with the other three films to have missed and, as entertainment, it might just scrape by as a night-in for teenage boys.
