Dez's Picks: 'The Road Warrior' (aka 'Mad Max 2'), 1981

ABOVE: Mel 'sugar tits' Gibson stars as Mad Max

I admit that I have a weakness for post-apocalyptic films. The Road Warrior is the Citizen Kane of post-apocalyptic cinema. It is also one of the greatest pure action films on the planet. For those unfamiliar with the plot, it is very simple. The first film in the trilogy, Mad Max, featured a young Australian unknown by the name of Mel Gibson. Mel is Max Rockatansky, a cop in a not so distant future where society is falling apart and rogue biker gangs rule the highways. Max is also a family man (featuring some very cheesy domestic bliss scenes). To cut a long story short, his family gets mowed down by bikers, Max goes crazy with revenge, and the film ends. Mad Max turned out to be an unexpected international hit. In Australia it was followed by Mad Max 2, named The Road Warrior in America because nobody here saw the first one (not that you needed to; a narrator sums up the first film at the beginning of the second).

The Road Warrior opens with Max wandering the wastelands “a shell of a man”, surviving day by day. Things have further deteriorated to where there is no semblance of civilized society left. Max happens upon a desperate holdout band of folks defending their precious gas reserves from a vicious gang, led by the menacing Humungus. Gas = survival out here, because if you are not mobile you are dead. The Humungus and his gang will stop at nothing to get the "go-juice" being protected within the fortress guarded by this group of survivors. Through circumstance, Max is thrown in the middle of this battle, and he slowly rediscovers his humanity when he joins forces with this outpost group against the brigand gangs of the wastelands...blah blah blah. The Road Warrior is really about kick-ass action.


ABOVE: Beware of The Humungus

The final 30 minute or so climax is an adrenaline rush nearly unmatched in movies. In his famous review of the film, critic Roger Ebert dubbed The Road Warrior “one of the most relentlessly aggressive films ever made.” Recall this is all before computer effects. These stunts are real. The kinetic energy is so palpable, there is no substitute for the real thing, people. Forget George Lucas and his plastic planetary worlds and intergalactic video game-like battles. Director George Miller creates action that is made of dirt, sweat, blood and gasoline. (Or as they say in the film, "guzaline.")

BELOW: This compilation of action clips from all three Mad Max films (done to Motorhead's 'Ace of Spades,' a song which is not featured in the actual movies) gives you a taste of the adrenaline rush of which I speak...


The Road Warrior is a western set in the future, replacing horses with cars. Miller brilliantly does more with less, allowing the stark Australian desert to become as much a character as any of the humans who inhabit the picture. Mel Gibson’s Max is in almost every frame, but he barely utters word. Max is a post-apocalyptic Man With No Name, Clint Eastwood's immortal character from the Sergio Leone epics. The society-besieged-by-evildoers is as old as Kirosawa’s Seven Samurai through westerns like The Magnificent Seven.

The Road Warrior was followed by a horrible third entry, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, valuable for pure camp purposes. You can enjoy the minor low budget charms of the first film and enjoy the camp elements of the third…but The Road Warrior stands on its own as one of the most exhilarating action films ever made.