The Road Warrior is Australian director George Miller’s 1981 follow-up to his 1979 post-apocalyptic thriller Mad Max. In The Road Warrior, Mel Gibson reprises his role as Max Rockatansky, a former cop who has become, in the words of the film's narrator, "a burnt-out shell of a man" after a ruthless motorcycle gang kills his wife and child in the 1st film. Now, with nothing to live for but the road, Max’s existence is defined by scavenging fuel for his beat up, but still angry '73 supercharged V8 Pursuit Special!
The premise of the Road Warrior is concerned with a small community of settlers who have barricaded themselves and their oil well against a gang of bandits led by Humungus who wants the oil. By chance, Max comes into this situation as an opportunist by rescuing one of the settlers and taking the man back to the compound. Max does not care one way or the other about helping the settlers against Humungus. He barters an abandoned truck he found in exchange for fuel. The settlers decide to abandon the compound and need Max to drive their fuel tanker but he turns down the offer. Later, Humungus’s gang attacks him on the road and kill his dog. Max returns to the compound and agrees to drive the fuel truck.
The struggle between the settlers and the bandits is a metaphor of the current geopolitical landscape with America as Humungus pillaging weaker nations like Libya, Iraq and Syria, countries parked on oil reserves.
Certain characters in this film stand out like Feral Boy (Emil Minty) who goes on to lead the northern tribe. Another standout is Max’s sidekick Gyro Captain (Bruce Spence) and his gyrocopter. Another memorable character is Pappagallo played by English actor Michael Preston who acts as a Moses figure among the settlers.
Even though Mad Max went on to become the biggest movie ever in Australia, American film audiences knew nothing about it. It is for this reason that George Miller gave the sequel its stand alone title, The Road Warrior; after all, who would go see a sequel to a film they knew nothing about? This decision on Miller’s part paid off as The Road Warrior garnered numerous positive reviews, including The New York Times and Roger Ebert who praised the film's action sequences.
And this film is all about action! There is no dialogue until 15 minutes into the film, just action. And the film ends the way it begins--with action in the form of a 15 minute chase sequence involving every stunt and tricked-out vehicle you can imagine, real crashes with real cars, and real stuntmen flying through the air like rag dolls with no CGI effects to speak of--great cinematography by Dean Semler and a hell of a lot of balls by George Miller. I also can't leave out the legendary score by Brian May, especially in the film’s opening montage, which is in my opinion, the best montage ever.
I recently got this film on blu ray and it's like a new movie compared with the DVD version. The blu ray is widescreen while the DVD is cropped off on the sides and the top. There’s stuff you see in widescreen that makes the upgrade from DVD to blu ray worth it to me. And finally, this film is 96 minutes long which makes the pacing even faster. For the same reason that some consider T2 superior to Terminator, I think that The Road Warrior is superior to Mad Max because it gives you more of what you liked about the 1st film.
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