I think if this had been a debut movie made for say $1 or 2 million, everyone would have been impressed. But coming after Animal Kingdom, with a big budget, it's very underwhelming. There is still lots to admire - I think David Michod is a very good director, who presents things in a consistently fresh, interesting way, there's some wonderful actors - but it's not a very good story.
For starters it took me a while to wrap my head around "the world". I get that society was breaking down and there was a lot of lawlessness and guns, but there were still policemen and phones and trains and some law and order - some things worked, others didn't. I kind of rationalised it in my head as "well it's kind of like a country in modern day Africa" and that helped a little. (I read somewhere in this world people came from all over Australia to work in the mines... I never got that sense from actually watching the film.)
Also the basic spine is Guy Pearce trying to get his car back. That's not everything of course, but that's what pushes the bulk of the narrative along (if I remember correctly... he wants the car back because his dog's corpse is in the book). Well, the thing is Pearce's character doesn't really seem to want this car back - he doesn't seem to care about anything much really, he's broken from the death of his wife and the breakdown of society and he's clinging to this. In Mad Max or it's ilk Max was driven by primeval emotions - revenge, survival. Pearce just kind of ambles along, and wants the car back because he's annoyed more than anything - yes there's the dog's corpse but that's not revealed until the end, so he's this enigmatic mystery. He even gets the chance to have his car back early in the movie but just walks up and abuses the people who have it, enabling them to conk him out - meaning he's either stupid when it comes to strategy, or doesn't care. There is no real emotion there, just some "cool" dystopian misogyny. It's also far too easy for him to kill people - there's no suspense of say him being up against someone who is as tough as him.
Animal Kingdom had a distant, passive protagonist as well but it also had very human, twisted, emotional people in the form of Jackie Weaver, Ben Mendehlson and Guy Pearce. Here the most human character is Robert Pattison, as a dimwit American looking to be reunited with his brother. Pattison gives a good performance (it is a showy role) and provides some connection for the audience.
I don't want to be overly critical - it's stylish and compelling in a lot of places, and for the first half hour or so I really went with it. But over time I felt it ran out of puff and/or was not realised in the way it could have been.
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