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| Image credit: IMDb |
Our political sphere is incorrect, our cultural identity (right now) is
not so crash hot, and we’re absolutely ruining our precious and beautiful flora
and fauna, but there is still one thing I love and will always love about
Australia, its films.
It’s been a long time coming, but this afternoon I finally sat down and
watched the second instalment in George Miller’s Mad Max trilogy: The Road
Warrior.
Set in a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland, a badass, leather-clad
drifter traverses the wilderness in the search for gasoline. Outrunning a gang
of ruthless highway pirates, Max (Mel Gibson) discovers a human colony pumping
and defending gallons of fuel from the feral sieges of Wasteland gangs. Aiding
the colony in the hope of gaining some fuel, he puts pedal to the metal to
destroy the Wasteland ‘leader’, the Humungus, and help the colonists escape to a
better life.
This is the movie that cemented Ozploitation films internationally, and
gained Australian cinema its badass and free-wheelin’ (yeah I went there) reputation
abroad. While the first movie is the (now) critically-revered gemstone of
Aussie cinema, The Road Warrior is
the film that everyone knows and it catapulted Mel Gibson into new realms of
stardom.
Coming out at a time when Australia was making B and ‘bad’ movies just
because we fucking could, The Road
Warrior is sci-fi rev-head’s wet dream! Having no real story to speak of
aside from ‘ the quest for fuel’, the film is nothing but bondage, piracy, epic
car-chases, and apocalyptic explosions.
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| Image credit: S. Evan Townsend |
Max is the un-killable bad boy that all guys who live in their parents’
basement are in their dreams. After suffering absolute loss in the first movie,
he wanders throughout this one with no emotion whatsoever, in the words of Po,
he’s so hardcore he doesn’t feel anything! Even a canine companion and an
annoying child actor can’t bring a smile to this dude’s dusty and (often)
blood-streaked face and, I’m not going to lie, it’s so much fucking fun to
watch!
The rest of the movie is pure, adrenaline-pinching chaos; a whole
sperm-bank of action movie tropes and visual badassery, set against a dry and
dusty world of orange that is Australia.
Despite its short running-time, The
Road Warrior still manages to pack a spiked, knuckle-dusted punch over
three decades later!
Director: George Miller, 1981
Cast: Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Michael
Preston, Max Phipps, Vernon Wells, Kjell Nilsson, Virginia Hey, William Zappa,
and Emil Minty
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