The Road Warrior

When the narrator kicks in at the beginning of The Road Warrior you get an immediate sense of what is about to come. He tells a story of a war between two great tribes and the devastating effects on civilization. Fuel has become very scarce. Mad Max gave us an insight into a declining world, one in which a handful of cops hold out against an ever increasing hoard of gangs. When a gang kills and maims those who are important to Max, we get a high octane revenge film. The Road Warrior is in a more explicit world, defined by real life escalation of the Cold War and seems to have taken notions of the 70s Oil Crisis to heart.

Where the world was in decline, we now enter a world that has fully collapsed. A group of decent people still clinging to their humanity is defending an oil pumping station. They are besieged by the truly monstrous The Humongous, a bulking, lumbering villain with a raspy commanding voice and the hint of radiation exposure. Into this world comes Max, a loner, still coping with his loss and the new world. Max has become an opportunist stealing gas when he has to and willing to rescue a man only on condition that he can get some gas. Max however is not built to wander. He is built for a cause, he just needs to be reminded of that.

By films end, Max makes the sacrifice for the people he meets which results in the spectacular 13 minute chase sequence. As the film fades out with the hopes of the survivors, Max is left like a Moses who can get you to the promise land but cannot enter himself. But that is okay, we get the sense that this is who Max is. Max the legend, the epic hero. And we know that this is just one story. In The Road Warrior we get an action film done right. No CGI but real effects. A story you can care about, its a bare bones story but it has a clear sense of what it is, one story in an epic cycle.