Stunning new Mad Max installment shortchanges story

Mad Max: Fury Road sets new industry standards in costumes and vehicular action sequences, cranking lavish special effects up to 11—with 3D glasses, up to 111! But the latest installment of this 1980s-era cult classic franchise is hardly more than a protracted car chase: Even 3D glasses can’t bring depth to the film’s flat characters and one-dimensional plot.

Civilization has long since disintegrated into a vast wasteland where brutal tyrants control tribes of ragged humans and war over “guzzoline.” Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) rules the population of the Citadel with the help of the War Boys, white-painted young men (imagine a Tolkein orc, Hitler Youth alloy) bred by Joe’s “wives.”

In this world, “hope is a mistake,” Max warns. He should know. A motorcycle gang murdered his wife and child (at the end of the original Mad Max movie) years before. Now imprisoned in the Citadel, Max (Tom Hardy) hangs in a small cage, half-drained of his universal-donor, O-negative blood.

Joe sends Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) on a gasoline run in the War Rig. When she diverts from the route, Joe figures out she has kidnapped five of his young wives, and he sends his army of fanatical War Boys after them. Injured War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult), joins the chase, still attached by I.V. to his “blood bag”—Max. But Max gets free and accompanies Furiosa and the wives in their search for the Green Place, the Land of Many Mothers, with the War Boys and other motorized gangs in relentless pursuit.

But Fury Road spends all its capital on astonishing visual opulence while barely exploring what drives Max’s reluctant cooperation and Furiosa’s gritty heroism. A few brief flashbacks and a short, emotionless statement near the film’s end just don’t cut it. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, the 1982 hit to which Fury Road has many parallels, is a better story.

Although there are some scantily dressed women and one bare backside in the distance, franchise writer-director George Miller commendably omits from Fury Road (rated R for intense sequences of violence throughout, and for disturbing images) the foul language and nudity that tainted the first three films. But also absent is a compelling storyline, leaving the entertaining Fury Road a mile short of greatness.