It is rare for reboots and remakes of classic (or at least kind of memorable) intellectual properties to not be conceived by major Hollywood studios as a scheme to make a cheap profit without any regard to quality. How about for a reboot to entirely stand on it’s own? As of a week ago, I could think of only two: Casino Royale and The Dark Knight.

And out from the bare and beautiful desert rides film “mastermind,” (as he is called in the trailer) George Miller, revving his armed, armored, nitro-spitting vehicle of a film, “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which I can safely call the best action movie of the decade, and possibly the century.

Here, Miller employed a refreshingly streamlined narrative as the foundation for some of the craziest combat sequences, entirely inventive set and machine and sound design, and surprisingly deep performances, all combined to rewrite the rules of action filmmaking.

Once a mighty road warrior, Max (Tom Hardy) lives in a post apocalyptic desert (“reduced to only a single instinct: survival,” as he says in the movie) when he is captured to be used as a human blood bag by the warboys under the command of Immorten Joe, a ruthless warlord who controls his people by controlling the entire water supply (when he allows his citizens to drink, he releases a waterfall upon his people, telling them not to get addicted to the water). When one of the war boys that he gives blood to sets to capture a rogue imperator of Joe’s, Max becomes chained to the front of a spiked automobile in the midst of spectacular vehicular warfare. It is on this conquest that he meets the infamous Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who is under pursuit of the warboys after stealing Immorten Joe’s sex slaves (the “Wives”) to take them to the Green Place, a supposed land full of life and liberty. After being freed from his shackles by Furiosa and the wives, Max reluctantly agrees to help them travel to the Green Place while being chased relentlessly across miles of desert.

The plot never takes any ambitious twists and turns, but it never really needs to, especially considering how much storytelling is executed through non-verbal means. The sand-soaked horizon, the off-road vehicles that look as if they were taken apart and put back together again with bigger engines and more spikes, and the primitive, one tracked nature of each character provides everything that needs to be known about the environment.

Miller implies countless stories about each character with little to no exposition, and because the main characters of Max and Furiosa have been assembled and presented with such care, the performances, especially Theron’s, become much more powerful. It is almost as if the atmosphere around the characters has eroded them so much that they have lost any use for speech, and seeing such a beautiful thing lost to a world that man has inflicted upon himself really hurts on a level that no dialogue could possibly explain.

For the first time since I-have-no-idea-when, we have practical effects on the big screen. The entire movie was filmed on location in the Namib Desert of Southern Africa, and all of the automobiles were entirely functional. Because these sequences are filmed in real time with actors performing highly dangerous stunts such as vaulting from one moving car to the next on 30 foot poles, they have an energy and risk surrounding them with twice the thrills of a film largely shot in a green screened room that will be saturated in CGI when post production approaches. Even scenes that have to be computer generated, such as a blood red sandstorm that the warboys fearlessly enter exclaiming “What a Lovely Day!” in insanity stricken jubilee, are believable because the cast and crew fully commit to Miller’s vision, refusing to let such a monumental concept ever feel cheap. The cinematography captures the action in all its colorful glory, never masking any loose ends of stunt work or pyrotechnics.

https://youtu.be/hatTUJT0Kxg

Above, a YouTube video demonstrating behind the scenes footage on MadMax’s masterful filming.

Most importantly, the film travels quickly while still retaining a shape and a core. For all of its explosions and heavy metal guitar players rocking out on top of a roaring armored car with a flamethrower attached to the guitar’s neck, the movie has dynamics. When a sequence ends, it gracefully fades out into quiet, allowing time to contemplate over the destruction and the endless desert ahead, as well as a moment to study the complex predicament that Max, Furiosa and the wives face. When the camera swoops through Immorten Joe’s armada, individual motors and warboys fade in and out of the mix according to the camera’s position. When gunfire pierces brief tranquility, it does not oppress the movie from each direction, but rather it occurs in one corner of the theater and crescendos into the movie’s next event. A filmmaker’s job is to make use of light and sound to create art, and Miller’s new film is crafted in those terms to the absolute highest caliber.

Some may call “Mad Max: Fury Road” a dumb Hollywood action flick. They may call it one giant action scene. But even if it does not require heavy brain activity to enjoy, even if it has extensive expertly crafted combat sequences, it certainly has a purpose. “Fury Road” is hope in the midst of hopelessness, a world where battered individuals will travel for hundreds of days to reach a land that might not even be there at the end of the journey.

In many ways, George Miller’s struggles with this film’s production, which went on for sixteen years, parallel Max and Furiosa’s journey to the Green Place. Miller had no idea whether or not his efforts to make this film would ever pay off, let alone if the movie would ever finish production. Fortunately for him and moviegoers alike, “Fury Road” pays off in every definition of the term. It is classic movie-making at its best, and an unforgettable film going experience.