Review: 'Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga' is a brutal and brilliant cinematic fireball

Who gives a baby girl a name like Furiosa? Someone who knows the hell that's coming for her, that's who.

Nearly a decade ago, Charlize Theron -- in a performance for the ages -- played this grownup road warrior in "Mad Max: Fury Road," which visionary director George Miller turned into the gold standard for R-rated, rocket-fueled romper-stompers. It won six Oscars.

Now, in "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" -- the fifth film in the franchise -- the character gets her own origin movie.

This prequel is only in theaters, which is really the only place to see it, preferably in IMAX, to get the max impact of watching Anya Taylor-Joy, in for Theron, showing the younger Furiosa in the exhilarating act of inventing herself. You'll be dazzled, guaranteed.

As for Mad Max, played by Tom Hardy last time and Mel Gibson in the three Max epics before that beginning in 1979, he's mostly an audience memory from the previous movies since Furiosa hasn't met him yet. We know Max Rockatansky as a man seeking vengeance for his murdered family in a dystopian wasteland ruled by bike gangs and outlaws of every sadistic stripe.

Conditions are the same for Furiosa, first seen here as a child, scrappily played by Alyla Browne, who is kidnapped by a horde of bikers from her idyllic life with mom (Charlee Fraser) in the Green Place of Many Mothers.

So begins the 15-year odyssey of the soon orphaned Furiosa to return home, no matter how many baddies she needs to kill.

Once again, Miller, -- an Aussie ER-doctor-turned filmmaker known for the "Max" movies as well as family-friendly likes of "Babe: Pig in the City" and the animated penguins of two "Happy Feet" musical hits -- lets vengeance rip.

One look at Furiosa and the kiddie crowd would be traumatized for life.

It sure looks like a medical emergency when Furiosa locks horns with nutjob biker boss Dementus, hilariously swanned by a terrific Chris Hemsworth. This preening warlord wears a billowing white cape and gets around in a chariot pulled by motorcycles. Of course, he does. And you gotta love it. Hemsworth's satirical approach to macho is a joy forever.

Taylor-Joy ("The Witch," Queen's Gambit") doesn't even show up in the film for an hour, but when she does she's gangbusters.

With almost no dialogue, her hypnotically wide-set eyes speak volumes and take in everything that roars in the camera magic of Simon Duggan and the score by Tom Holkenborg.

It's action Armageddon when Furiosa is herded to the Citadel, a heavily guarded fortress where Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme filling in for the late Hugh Keays-Byrne) adds her to his army of breeders. Joe's elite soldiers, the inbred, head-shaved war boys, smear on white body paint and seek to dominate lesser beings by controlling their supply of water, gasoline, and ammunition.

Furiosa finds an ally and a love connection in Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke, smashing) to take on the war boys in spike-bedecked monster trucks. It's vehicular homicide as popcorn fun. Taylor-Joy remembers an action scene with Furiosa driving a rig through a war zone that took 78 days to film. I don't doubt it. With a minimum of digital tricks, the eye-popping is nonstop.

Between the chases, races, crashes and bashes, this brutal and brilliant cinematic fireball hurtles along, showing how Furiosa lost her left arm, disguised herself as a boy to escape Joe's rapacious sons, and grew up to be someone who could pass for the powerhouse that Theron brought so fully and indelibly to life.

Though it can't really match the incomparable "Fury Road" (what could?), "Furiosa" deepens the feminist fire in a character destined to take her place with cinema's great action warriors in the still timely and tragic battle against toxic masculinity.

Miller, who's pushing 80 and still planning new screen adventures, has teamed up with Taylor-Joy to create the perfect bookend for "Fury Road" by turning "Furiosa" into a big-screen epic that's spectacular in every sense of the word.

Five words: This you have to see.