Writer/director George Miller (Babe, Happy Feet) returns to the insanely influential world of Mad Max thirty years after Beyond Thunderdome and schools all the imitators by delivering one of the most ridiculously entertaining blockbusters ever made.

This is a metal-grinding, gut-crunching, petrol-guzzling powerhouse of an action movie that pulsates with tangible, weighty theatrics.

In a post-apocalyptic future that may or may not be Australia, drifter Max (Tom Hardy) forges an uneasy alliance with the one-armed Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who is attempting to liberate the harem of diseased warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne).

Pursued across a desert landscape by a legion of the most awesomely pimped-out vehicles ever constructed, Max's survival instincts are put to the test like never before.

A rare blockbuster that is clearly driven by a singular vision, Fury Road shames other films of this scale with the amount of grit, grime, texture and overall artistry on display. This is blockbuster auterism.

The unrelenting power of the filmmaking renders Mel Gibson's absence a non-issue – George Miller is the true star of this franchise, and he's firing on all cylinders.