This is the first “Mad Max” film in 30 years directed by 70-year-old George Miller. It stars Tom Hardy as “Mad” Max Rockatansky, making it also the first “Mad Max” film not to feature Mel Gibson in the title role.

    In a desert landscape where humanity is broken, two rebels just might be able to restore* order: Max, a man of action and few words, and Furiosa, a woman of action who is looking to make it back to her childhood homeland.

    Entrusted by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) with driving the large War Rig truck across the desert to an oil-producing outpost, tough ruling-class babe Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) instead drives it across the desert with an illicit* cargo — Immortan’s breeding wives, who have memorable names such as Capable, Cheedo the Fragile and, best of all, Toast the Knowing. They look like a group of supermodels traveling to the desert for a fashion shoot, although one of them, the Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), is soon due to give birth.

    The first two “Max” features ran barely 90 minutes, and it takes courage and real confidence* to dare push a chase* film with very little dialogue to two hours. But Miller has pulled it off by coming up with innumerable* new elements to keep the action compelling*: the pitiless mindset of a cruel society, bending poles sticking up from vehicles that allow soldiers atop them to be lowered into enemy trucks for hand-to-hand fighting, and a central woman, missing one arm, who’s as tough as any man but also keeps a special link to a faraway society of women she wants to find.

    If one wanted to map out a chronology* of Max’s life and adventures, it would no longer make any sense in terms of the man’s age, nor does it matter at all. Miller compares him to James Bond; Max just goes on and on.

    Miller originally spoke of filming a sequel called “Furiosa” back-to-back with this one, so it seems he has material more or less ready to go, and Hardy has claimed he’s signed for three more installments.

    (SD-Agencies)