The original Mad Max, the 1979 nihilistic low-budget death derby starring a beautiful yet crazy Aussie unknown, Mel Gibson, was the movie that first turned me on to action. This was testosterone, baby, and I was an estrogen-pumping college student in Berkeley catching Manhattan and Meatballs and Mr. Hulot’s Holiday. Enter Gibson and Director George Miller, angry and furious and driving the rusty old engine of cinema into the dusty dystopic future. I was exhilarated. And I was hooked. Blame them, or own it, I became an action junkie.

The Max madder-than-hell, I’m angry and I’m not going to take it any more sequels always overstretched the simple premise of the original, going to Thunderdome and beyond. I’ll leave it to the diehard online list-makers to rank these films like so many kindergartners sitting on mats learning their numbers for the first time. And, so, it is with relief and joy that I pick up with Hardy, an absolute favorite of mine, with his manly-man Max a pussycat compared to his Bronson performance.

Hardy inhabits the titular hero – all scarred muscle and tortured eyes and more flashbacks than a habitual LSD user — in a movie that is as linear and relentless as the original. There’s birth and death and the question becomes how much torture, inhumanity and deprivation an individual has to survive until that final apocalypse (or Valhalla depending on your faith).
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