Amazon.com Essentials:
A strong candidate for the designation of most thrilling
action movie ever made (the turbo-charged exhilaration of its
full-throttle highway chases has never been equaled), the second part
of George Miller's post-apocalyptic trilogy is also a magnificently
imagined movie myth. Like the Star Wars trilogy (by that other
George) the Mad Max films draw their inspiration from the works
of mythologist Joseph
Campbell. In the 1979 original, Max (Mel Gibson) is a policeman,
the last guardian of civilization and order in a devastated world
reduced to chaos. But when a leather-clad gang of sadomasochistic
speed demons mows down Max's family, his remaining connections to
humanity are also permanently severed. After brutally exacting his
revenge, Max wanders off into the wasteland alone, "a burned out
shell of a man" who (to paraphrase The Searchers) is
destined to wander forever between the winds. In The Road
Warrior, Max rediscovers a sliver of his shattered humanity, and a
spark of redemption, when he helps an embattled colony of pioneers
fight off the savages who are after that most precious of all
commodities: "guzzline." Max is transformed into a legendary
hero, just as Mel Gibson was catapulted to international movie
stardom. With its final stirring images, The Road Warrior
transcends its genre (whatever that may be--science fiction? Western?
action adventure?) and becomes something timeless. It's a great
movie. --Jim Emerson
Amazon.com Essentials:
A strong candidate for the designation of most thrilling
action movie ever made (the turbo-charged exhilaration of its
full-throttle highway chases has never been equaled), the second part
of George Miller's post-apocalyptic trilogy is also a magnificently
imagined movie myth. Like the Star Wars trilogy (by that other
George) the Mad Max films draw their inspiration from the works
of mythologist Joseph
Campbell. In the 1979 original, Max (Mel Gibson) is a policeman,
the last guardian of civilization and order in a devastated world
reduced to chaos. But when a leather-clad gang of sadomasochistic
speed demons mows down Max's family, his remaining connections to
humanity are also permanently severed. After brutally exacting his
revenge, Max wanders off into the wasteland alone, "a burned out
shell of a man" who (to paraphrase The Searchers) is
destined to wander forever between the winds. In The Road
Warrior, Max rediscovers a sliver of his shattered humanity, and a
spark of redemption, when he helps an embattled colony of pioneers
fight off the savages who are after that most precious of all
commodities: "guzzline." Max is transformed into a legendary
hero, just as Mel Gibson was catapulted to international movie
stardom. With its final stirring images, The Road Warrior
transcends its genre (whatever that may be--science fiction? Western?
action adventure?) and becomes something timeless. It's a great
movie. --Jim Emerson
