Road Warrior

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

I saw this once a long time ago (I saw Mad Max and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome at one point as well, but I remember way more about this movie) and enjoyed it so I watched it again the other day. Aaaaaand I figured I'd review it coz hey, gotta review somethin' right?

Set in the not so distant future after war n' stuff has turned the world into the Australian outback (augh!). Max (Mel Gibson) lost his wife and young child to a buncha bad motherfuckers in Mad Max and now drives around the wasteland with his dog and his shotgun doing shit. In the search for gasoline he gets roped in to helping a small community of refiners escape from the S&M dudes who rule the wastes.

This actually held up really well, compared to some stuff I watched when I was little and seems really fuckin dumb now - yeah, this movie might be kinda dumb but it's so fucking insane it doesn't matter. It's impossible not to be impressed by the sheer craziness, from the ridiculous costumes, to the whacked out gyro-guy. It makes even the weirdest gaps in logic seem somehow sensible. I don't doubt that the group of leather chap clad badasses would waste all their gasoline driving circles around the encampment in their high performance cars instead of just burrowing underneath the compound - I mean, fucking look at them! They're obviously not the most contemplative dudes, they just do stuff coz they're bored, they don't worry about it a whole lot.

So it's pretty fun. I don't really like car chases in movies but this one does a really good job, particularly because all the vehicles are crazy and cool to look at. My brother and I have like four vehicles between us in various states of functionality, and our mother suggested that we supe them up and use them to reinact scenes from this movie. Just because.

So the highlights of this movie I would say are a) the awesome cars.

b) Mel Gibson. He may be a lunatic now but he's a really good actor. Also he was like twenty five in this movie and ridiculously hot. Holy sweet jesus. And he's got that hot leather jacket.... daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn. Max is the coolest, hands down. He's got an awesome dog. I would say that he's got an awesome car but it's a Ford so fuck that.

c) The stunts. While watching this movie, I reminded myself that all the stunts were real, none of them were done with computers or any of that bullshit, and it blew my mind. I like watching really good stunts (or, failing that, horribly botched ones), it really flips my switch.

The only thing which didn't flip my switch about this movie was that the accents were so thick I could barely understand a word coming out of anybody's head (I seem to remember Mad Max was even worse for that), although part of that can be blamed on the fact I watched a really old video copy and the sound wasn't great in the first place. But still. Fuckin Australian accents - they're almost as annoying as Canadian accents.

END

Directed by: George Miller.  Written by: George Miller, Terry Hayes & Brian Hannant.  Starring: Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Emil Minty, Michael Preston, Virginia Hey, Kjell Nilsson, Vernon Wells, Max Phipps, Arkie Whiteley