Ultimate Anti-Heroes Part 2: Mad Max 2 – The Road Warrior
ONE OF THE MOST RELENTLESSY AGRESSIVE MOVIES EVER MADE” – Roger Ebert
Long before Mel Gibson charmed us with his good cop/mad cop routine as a Hollywood action darling in ‘Lethal Weapon’, and ‘Babe’ was but a pink glint in George Millers directorial eye, the pair had collaborated on the movie that would bring Mel to the attention of a larger audience and further stratospheric stardom, but more importantly would define the Post Apocalyptic film genre, and introduce one of the meanest sons of bitches to ever grace cinema.
Millers world of tomorrow is a broken place, and while it isn’t necessary to see the previous outing to appreciate ‘Road Warrior’, it is notable for paving the path our lead will ultimately tread. With the collapse of society following a nuclear holocaust, the last vestiges of law and order have fallen and psycho scavengers, feral gangs and sadistic enterprisers rule what’s left of the barren earth, where fuel is the key to survival, a fast transport the difference between life and death.
Once a member of the elite Australian Highway Patrol Unit, ‘Mad’ Max Rockatansky has long since forsaken mans laws, his humanity lost to barren roads and a heinous revenge for his slaughtered family. Forging a new life in the wastelands as a scavenging vigilante and living on the razors edge of a brutal existence, Max is a husk of his former self, reborn harder than Wolverines kneecap, with no mercy and a threadbare patience.
The spartan use of dialogue from a mainly taciturn protagonist leaves the storytelling mostly to Millers direction, with only a brief intro explaining the current state of global dilapidation, breaking us in with a narrated montage reel at the film’s opening.
Like a man who’s lost it all, a weird western wanderer reduced to the simplest tasks of survival and revenge, Gibson delivers a performance bereft of charm, like Millers plot, stripped bare of niceties and audience pandering, and only really there to get the job done in the most explosive way possible.
After a rubber burning adrenaline shot in the opening chase sequence we slowly learn that a small group of survivalists have set up camp around one of the last oil refineries, and boxed in a makeshift fortress, fight to hold off the relentless horde of bike punks and bondage killers led by the steroidal hockey masked freak-show ‘Lord Humungous’, the perfect form of crazy malevolence for a world teetering on the brink.
In a bid to secure himself fuel for his own rig, the battered black and death on wheels sexy; last of the V8 Interceptors, Max enters into a bargain with the leader of the group; Pappagallo (a pragmatic Mike Preston), who seeing only a “maggot living off the corpse of the old world” is loathe to entertain the notion. But salvation lies in the least likely of vessels and an epic turn of events quickly gears into motion.
Without giving too much away for those who haven’t seen the film, this is essentially a car chase movie superimposed over a western with a post apocalyptic backdrop. Echoes of the Magnificent Seven ring out from the stripped down plot, but instead of banditos on horseback, Millers biker punks and crazed junk yard buggy jockeys form the enemy at the gates for the small band of beaten down settlers under constant attack in the refinery.
Notable turns go to Bruce Spence as an unlikely sidekick, playing the eccentric, entertaining and bat shit crazy Gyro Captain. With his cobbled together skeleton of a chopper, inventively booby trapped with a deadly poison snake, he’s the perfect mesh of brains meet lunacy is his grim quest to survive. And Vernon Well’s Mohawked marauder Wez, a twisted byproduct of life in the shadow of fallout, equals Max on the relentless stakes and ups him for sheer ferocity as the Humungous insane lieutenant .
But it’s with Emil Minty as a ‘Feral kid’ packing a lethal stainless steel boomerang that we find any trace of goodwill left in the morally ravaged lead. Minty in his ape like innocence plays an integral role in reconnecting Max with his forsaken past and humanity, the only other creature he shows any regard for being his bedraggled dog. And receiving the affecting consideration of others eventually becomes a pivotal turning point in Max’s strongly resisted redemption.
Yet what ultimately makes Gibson’s stony merc a candidate for Anti-hero Valhalla isn’t simply that under the duress of need and human kindness he eventually caves to a higher calling. It’s that even when that higher calling is beaten kicking and screaming out of him, we can still see that at his core Max is given to the same frailties as anyone else, with a past steeped in loss and a directionless future. He differs mainly in his methods of coping, which are bone chillingly uncompromising and like the final car chase in a beaten up Mac Truck; utterly unstoppable.
The fact that thirty years on there are still no adequate contenders to ‘Road Warrior’s post apocalyptic throne tells you all you need to know about its hold on the genre. Films like the ‘Omega Man’ and ‘Logan’s Run’ may have did it first, but ‘Road Warrior’ did it best, spawning an army of imitators and homage’s from the popular; Fist of the North Star courtesy of Tetsuro Hara, to the not so popular Cobra and Water World (or Stallone and Costner screwing the pooch as we like to call it).
There is currently talk that Miller has a forth ‘Max’ title; Fury Road underway, with Tom York tipped as the lead. But truly whatever comes next, it’s doubtful that the raw power, heart bursting adrenaline and explosive action captured in the dusty Mundi Mundi plains of Silverton, New South Wales could ever be replicated, no matter how big the budget or grand the intentions.
Because ‘Road Warrior’ stands alone as a truly raw, truly innovative piece of exploitation Cinema, and Max stands a lone wolf, black clad scavenger of the apocalypse, an icon of cinema, and true anti-heroism at its very finest.
excellent
Leave a Reply