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Australia · 1981
Rated R · 1h 36m
Director George Miller
Starring Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Michael Preston, Max Phipps
Genre Action, Adventure, Science Fiction, Thriller
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The near total collapse of civilization has left oil reserves scarce, making gasoline the most valuable commodity. Former policeman Max Rockatansky wanders the apocalyptic landscape, coming across a small community of honest people attempting to maintain an oil refinery. The oil is under constant threat from the evil Lord Humungus and his gang, and Max is the community’s only hope.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by
Just as John Carpenter seems to generate box-office smashes incidentally to his search for intriguing shades of blue, Miller is so enthused with his camera angles that the movie has ended before he's aware there's only 20 lines of dialogue in it and not a single character better defined than Max's mutt. [22 May 1982]
The Road Warrior shows what happens when filmmakers learn something on their way to the sequel. Though the action here follows a predictable course (it's high-tech Shane), the milieu is fascinating, the story sophisticated where Mad Max was crude. [25 May 1982, p.D5]
It is the Road Warrior (as it was subtitled for the American release) that remains the definitive Max movie, hard as nails, hell for leather, it lands like a punch to the jaw. Don't drive angry? Yeah, right.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is a straightforward action/adventure film, filled to the brim with over-the-top chases and stunts.
Miller suggests violence; he does not exploit it. He throws the viewer off-balance by mixing the ricochet rhythms of his chase scenes with tableaux of Walpurgisnacht grandeur.
Washington Post by Rita Kempley
The Road Warrior is ferocious and unpredictable. It's energetic. It's peculiar. It's big and it's dirty. But mostly it's cosmically irrelevant. Hey, but, one thing's for sure, we are driven.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The experience is frightening, sometimes disgusting, and (if the truth be told) exhilarating. This is very skillful filmmaking, and Mad Max 2 is a movie like no other.
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
In its stripped-down, cannily cinematic way, it's one of the most imaginative Australian films yet released in this country. It has no pretensions to do anything except entertain in the primitive, occasionally jolting fashion of the first nickelodeon movies, whose audiences flinched as streetcars lumbered silently toward the camera.
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