Bursting with style, thrills, blood and pure relentless energy, The Road Warrior has got to be one of the best action films ever made. Never mind that it’s a sequel to a low-budget Australian film starring an unknown actor. Never mind that the director went on to make Happy Feet. The Road Warrior has a unique sense of style and post-apocalyptic vision that wasn’t just designed because it would look cool, but rather specifically engineered with the single-minded goal of creating the most awesome action movie ever. And it may have been a success.
Of course, it’s only known as The Road Warrior here in the United States. Others will probably know it as Mad Max 2. I like the change in title, though…Mad Max sounds like Mel Gibson plays some totally psycho dude out to kill everyone he sees. While the original film may have been about that, here Max is a lonely, brooding soul constantly on the run, and accepting of it. There’s nothing mad about him. His single-mindedness suits the world he lives in. It makes perfect sense to him, and after a while it makes sense to you too. Mad Max also sounds like more of a comedy, and while it has a handful of great laughs and cheer-inducing moments (the ones where you want to pump your fist and high-five the bros sitting next to you), for the most part, The Road Warrior is a grimly determined movie that has 90 minutes to provide you with the coolest car chases ever, along with a workable story and interesting characters. Miller gets the job done, and it rocks.
There’s a sort of a prologue at the beginning that tells you how Australia got to be as screwed-up as it is, something to do with bombs, I guess. I didn’t really follow and the best part was that it didn’t matter. Once the grainy faux-newsreel footage is over, BAM, Miller drops you into the middle of a dreary wasteland where Max is getting pursued by the bad guys. How do you know they’re bad? Because they make nasty faces and have weird hairdos and wear their leather like cheap male hookers, not like Max, who is always serious, has great hair, and wears leather because he belongs to a tradition of serious heroes on wheels, and if he’s not in leather, he’s just not the hero. Plus, he used to be a cop or something, so that might be an explanation, I guess. Who cares. In a film like The Road Warrior, real world logic is thrown aside and movie logic takes over. Movie logic doesn’t give a damn about backstory or realism. You’re here to be entertained, so shuddup and watch. I was happy to oblige.
Anyway, the story goes something like this: Max gets chased by bad guys, cool chase sequence, gets away. He meets the quirky and wily Gyro Captain, who promises to show him where gasoline is. Gasoline is a precious commodity in the automobile-dominated world of the future. I don’t know why, but it works. Cool. Plus, Max has to fill up, so everyone else in the world can just shut up about their needs for a while. He has driving to do. They get to the reservoir, briefly see the hooker punks from before committing a murder/rape, and Max uses the body of one of the guys to gain entry to the fortress that houses the reservoir. The good people inside have gas, and they want to escape the desert and start a new life, away from Lord Humungus (god, this movie is fantastic) and his evil tribe. The hooker guys are with Humungus. So Max strikes a deal with them: he’ll get them a truck in exchange for the gas to get out of there. And from then on it’s basically Max fighting Humungus’s hordes (which always seem to be the same two guys from the beginning) and protecting the Great Northern Tribe. Let the games begin!
It all climaxes in the most epic car chase I have ever seen, and I am willing to bet that I ever will see. It goes on for about twenty minutes and is flat-out brilliant. It helps that it’s not just one car getting chased, but a dozen. And one of them is a huge Mack semi. Everyone’s wearing leather and using spikes and shotguns and just when you start to feel that it’s going on too long, Miller ends it. The man’s timing is superb.
The world of this movie is a deranged apocalyptic fantasy, courtesy of the 1970s. For such a dreary backdrop, the whole thing is brilliantly alive. There’s even a seven-year-old kid dressed like he’s from Land of the Lost, only he throws razor boomerangs. It’s definitely Australia, with its flat plains and endless roads that stretch on forever in every direction. Perhaps the best thing about the screenplay, co-written by Miller, is that it knows when to shut up. Dialogue is only used when absolutely necessary. There are no one-liners tossed off during the action scenes. These guys are hell-bent on killing, and they don’t need to say anything to do it.
The Road Warrior is not just a fantastically realized vision and a great film, but one of the great cinematic experiences of my life. I hope this review can encourage as many people to see it as possible. Also, I now have much less of a problem with George Miller directing the Justice League movie. Go with God, sir.
