Fire and brimstone, high-octane blood smeared across shining chrome. What a lovely day to die. What a terrible time to live. None of us get to choose our moment, unless we're bestowed with a power that is undeserved and untenable. If you own the only drops of water in the desert you're a god, but it's only a matter of time before we kill god. If you surround yourself in bullets and myth and call that justice, one day your blind hubris will lead you into a quagmire from which there is no escape. And at that point you'd better have a large appetite for destruction, and pray your loyal dogs don't eat you before you can guzzle up what's left of the earth you destroyed. For everyone else there is toil and death, or the madness of surviving while all the planet's life turns to salt and dust.

There isn't any way to put into words what an achievement Mad Max: Fury Road is, though Soderbergh's gotten closer than any of us. It's two solid hours of Are You Fucking Kidding Me, trying to wrap your pathetic mind around how they did any of that. Thankfully Sixel's supercharged edit still allows us the pleasure of knowing these characters, whose growth and change in the harsh and throttling confines of the narrative and its setting give this monumental spectacle something greater. No matter what, the War Rig is going to take a picture perfect tumble to seal the story and the Citadel gates. But observing closely, that vehicle becomes something altogether more—a shelter, a character, an unwavering love of craft. It's a big rig made of spare parts, a conveyance of life itself. Once you see it that way, the same becomes true of every vehicle, every body, and every frame of the picture. That it is the best ever action film is practically incidental, a sturdy chassis for the best blockbuster since Jaws. All hail the king of the road.

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