Mad Max review – thrilling, incendiary, but not revolutionary

The road warrior provides a thrilling adventure, but the rust-ridden story can't keep up with the chase

As with many a long-running movie series, Mad Max films are built around a few recurring twists and turns. One of these devices is the theft of Max's car, the baleful V8 Interceptor that facilitates his transformation from family man to roving desert avenger in the 1979 original. Reclaiming the vehicle and thus, Max's feckless nomad lifestyle is a narrative crux in the sequels, with allies and antagonists basically serving as speed bumps.

Avalanche's videogame adaptation comes up with a smart variation on the theme, appropriate to the needs of an open-world game that, like fellow Warner Bros release Shadows of Mordor, borrows its spread of initially fogged-up map regions and stronghold infiltration missions from Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series. Rather than rescuing his car, Max must build another, the Magnum Opus, using parts and scrap metal that are plucked from the wreckage of downed autos, the underbellies of dead towns and the hands of tribal fanatics.