Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) reviews

The Fuzzy Mushroom take on Mad Max: Fury Road

By Fuzzy Mushroom · Updated 11 November 2026 · The Pros 96 · The Punters 92 · Spore Score 95 · How we write our takes

Why The Pros and The Punters agree

Mad Max: Fury Road is the rare action film that critics champion as loudly as fans. The Pros give it 96, The Punters 92, and the Spore Score is 95. A 4-point gap is next to nothing. Critics were bowled over by the craft; audiences were bowled over by the ride. For once, they were describing the same thing.

What it does well

In a desert wasteland, the warlord Immortan Joe controls water and keeps five young women as his captive "wives". Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), one of his drivers, smuggles them out in her war rig. Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), a loner haunted by the people he failed to save, is caught up in the escape, and the whole of Joe's army follows them down the Fury Road.

George Miller, who made the first Mad Max in 1979, turns the film into one long chase with a single U-turn. Most of the vehicles were real and most of the stunts were performed for the camera in the Namibian desert, which is why the action has a weight that computer-generated spectacle rarely matches. The storytelling is almost entirely visual: you learn who these people are from what they do under pressure. Theron's Furiosa is the real lead, and one of the great action heroes of the century so far.

Where people push back

There is very little dialogue and almost no let-up, which some viewers find exhausting. Max himself says little. If you need a conventional plot, the film's simplicity can look like thinness.

Context

Fury Road won six Oscars in 2016, for editing, production design, costume design, make-up and hairstyling, sound editing and sound mixing, more than any other film that year. Its prequel, Furiosa, followed in 2024.

The Fuzzy Mushroom verdict

Must-see, with a Spore Score of 95. The Pros and The Punters agree it is one of the best action films ever made, and we agree with both.