Bad Land: Road to Fury (2014) | No, it’s not a Mad Max rip-off, but a lo-fi sci-fi with a revenge Western twist | Movie Talk | What's on TV

In a future America, where water is under strict government control, farmer Ernest Holm (Michael Shannon) prays for rain.

A failure in the eyes of his children Mary (Elle Fanning) and Jerome (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and looked down on as the local drunk responsible for his wife's crippling accident, Ernest is reduced to delivering rations to the work gangs working on a new water supply that will be re-routed away from his farm. But getting involved with the enigmatic Flem (Nicholas Hoult) causes more further heartache for his young family…

It’s a bit of a cheat calling this a post-apocalyptic sci-fi and giving it a title to cash in Mad Max: Fury Road (which, incidentally, also stars Nicholas Hoult), as director Jake Paltrow (younger brother of Gwyneth) has crafted an engaging retro rural thriller, with broad brushstrokes of a contemporary Western and an emotional coming-of-age drama, that feels more like it could have been set in the 1950s rather than in the 2050’s. It’s also got a ‘revenge is best served cold’ story set in an arid desert landscape that could so easily have been set in the Australian Outback, even without the film's one trick pony sci-fi elements. READ MORE…