George Miller's "Mad Max: Fury Road" is filled with a plethora of action sequences, explosions, and color. And yet, the most overwhelming single element in the film is the expansive desert in which it takes place. The desert, filled with death and yet proving the only hope for survival for the central protagonists. The never-ending desert, with its sense of grandeur, and yet inevitable simplicity.

In essence, this is really what makes Miller's latest installment in this action sci-fi series so potent and fulfilling.

On one hand you have a visually stunning work of art that borders on sensory overload. And yet you have a minimalist story set in what amounts to one location and centering on movement in one direction and then another. 

The film is heavily stylized from its opening frame with its foreboding voiceover and Max's eventually swallowing of a two-headed lizard. And from then on it is a non-stop surge of adrenaline with even the slight reposes packed with tension and crescendoing suspense.

So what exactly is this scintillating action film about? Set in a tribal dystopian society led by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) who controls the society's "scarce" water and breast milk with an iron fist. He leads a set of warriors who he has brainwashed into enjoying suicidal missions with the promise of a better return in Valhalla (undoubtedly an unsubtle jab at a certain fundamentalist culture). However, he is forced with tracking down one of his best warriors Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Thereon) who has run off with his five brides to a symbolic Garden of Eden. All the while Max (Tom Hardy) must try to find a way to escape from the society, but finds himself attached to Nux (Nicholas Hoult), a young warrior intent on killing himself for the cause to find his reward in the afterlife.

To call the film's structure one expansive movement of a symphony could not be closer to the truth. You get your introduction, which sets up the world (and differentiates itself with a well-placed voiceover, an element never used thereafter) before we jump head first into a series of action sequences, one dovetailing off the other. The A-section action sequences eventually give way to story developments that provide much needed contrast (B-section), before we jolt back into our recapitulation, more action setpieces in which the characters move back in the direction from whence they originally came. And like a symphony with all of its layers of instrumentation, the senses are of greatest import in this journey. We listen as much as we watch, picking up small story nuggets along the way but not really reveling in them for two long. It is a very economic storytelling technique with just enough for viewers to perceive the structure and direction of its characters, but all the while maintaining them in the hurricane of emotion emanating from its imagery and sound. 

And even if the bare-bones story comes down to one word (survival), it has archetypal characters that still resonate long after the experience has ceased. Surprisingly it is Thereon's Furiosa who lies at the heart of the story with her search for a better existence far from the Citadel. Max has his own redemptive journey to endure and is constantly bearing witness to ghosts from his past. Though we never really know where these ghosts come from in his experience, they allow the viewer to connect with Max on a visceral level and accept his journey.

The character with the most development is Nux, who goes from being brainwashed (expressed symbolically from the IV connecting him and Max early on) to find his own moral compass in the movie's climax.

A lot has been made of Junkie XL's score which is unsurprisingly overwhelming and at times even overbearing. But there is no denying that the thunderous soundtrack is a major part of the escalating experience.

Visually this is a film unlike any other the in the post-apocalyptic genre with fierce colors dominating the screen. And even in the cooler night scenes, the color palette is a dark blue hue that retains a vividness in its expression. Those tired of the desaturated feel of other post-apocalyptic movies will find Miller's approach in "Mad Max: Fury Road" quite refreshing.

The 3D has its moments, especially in expressing the distant depths of the deserts, but the film's quick-cutting makes it impossible for the effect to fully realize itself for long. Moreover, as has been the case with other 3D film, sensory adaptation makes the effect become completely inert by the time the film reaches its second half. In other words, a gimmick (shocking right?). 

In many ways, "Mad Max: Fury Road" fits the conventional mold of Hollywood's machine. The film has explosions, a thin story and a relentless pace. But it manages to take all of those tropes and transform it into an organic whole where each and every piece is essential to its overall impact. And more over, where other action blockbusters suffer from predictability of their start-stop structure, this film, with its minimal dialogue, feels like a full-fledged experience that has you immersed from the start to its finish. This is pure action cinema at its very finest in what will undoubtedly be one of the best films of 2015.

What a lovely day indeed.