Tom Burke also stars in this fifth entry of the post-apocalyptic action series that began 45 years ago with ‘Mad Max,’ this time churning up a Wasteland War.

Hate to be a grouch when legions of social media film bros are breathlessly worshipping at the altar of The Demi-God of Cinema, George Miller, but Furiosa is a big step down from Mad Max: Fury Road. Whereas the 2015 instant action classic had grit, gravitas and turbo-charged propulsion that wouldn’t quit, this fifth installment in the dystopian saga grinds on in fits and starts, with little tension or fluidity in a narrative whose shapelessness is heightened by its pretentious chapter structure.

That’s not to say there aren’t mind-blowing action sequences. One 15-minute set-piece mid-film, in which Alyla Browne as the 10-year-old title character makes way for Taylor-Joy 15 years later, is electrifying.

Never one to dawdle over plot points when they can be folded into an explosive high-speed chase, Miller and co-writer Nico Lathouris also use that sequence to establish a quasi-romance between Furiosa and the dude at the war rig’s wheel, Praetorian Jack (an underused Tom Burke).

The character comes out of nowhere, but he serves to give Furiosa a crash course (literally) in the art of war, while encouraging her to burn rubber and find her homeland. Of course, anyone who’s seen Charlize Theron in Fury Road knows that Furiosa favors solo badassery, so it’s no surprise that Jack doesn’t stick around long. Even so, Miller could have given him a more ceremonious sendoff, especially since the scenes between Taylor-Joy and Burke are the parts that give the movie an actual heartbeat. Despite Praetorian Jack’s considerable promise as a character, he ends up being no substitute for Max.

While the story feeds directly into the action of Fury Road, Furiosa is closer in spirit and time frame to the films that started the franchise, Mad Max and its exhilarating direct sequel, released in the U.S. as The Road Warrior. The world has devolved into barbarism, with marauding gangs spreading terror across the land, but there are still people who remember a time before lawlessness. That applies to the community inhabiting the “Green Place,” a paradisiacal pocket of the land led by a benevolent matriarchy and somehow saved from ecocide.  

Furiosa’s sharp-shooting, machete-wielding mother Mary Jabasa (Charlee Fraser) gives chase and takes out a sizeable number of bikers in one of the more thrilling sequences. But her efforts to deliver Furiosa to safety fail. Her gruesome death, replete with crucifixion imagery, is the tragedy that shapes her daughter’s life and seeds her obsessive quest for revenge against the man who positions himself as a father figure.

Had that throughline been more robustly sustained, the movie might have built some emotional heft. Instead, the inevitable moment when Furiosa faces off with Dementus to demand the return of her lost childhood is kept on hold — and the warlord kept offscreen — for far too long while a messy and not especially interesting power struggle ensues.

The object is Dementus’ bid to gain control of the Citadel, the resource-rich rocky stronghold of diseased tyrant Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme, taking over from Fury Road’s Hugh Keays-Byrne, who died in 2020), protected by his War Boys. But the plotting is so sludgy and lacking in strategic detail that the endless back and forth across the desert starts to play like a Monster Trucks-type demolition derby, only with freakier characters, more elaborate vehicles and extra carnage.