Rating: 
Summary: Long live Mad Max!
Review: the Road Warrior, second entry in the Mad Max series, lives up to its title. Mad Max is back at it again when a small gas outpost is being blocked by a gang of "mean" biker guys. Max is obligated to help the small community living there by planning an attack to rid off the bikers. Somewhat of nothing of a plot. Mel Gibson is always great as Mad Max. The special effects are dazziling and mind blowing. Does get slow at times ,but just wait till the finale!
Rating: 
Summary: Second chapter in excellent trilogy a great film
Review: In 'Mad Max', the title character is a family man whose job - a cop in the future - calls him to patrol the anarchaic highways facing down the punks, criminals and 'terminal crazies'. Max fears the job will soon transform him into one of them, but it's when his family is cut down by a gang that Max is truly pushed over into psycho territory. The film ends with Max completing vengeance on the killers and, like all avenging angels, rides off into an uncertain sunset.This is how 'Road Warrior', second in the Mad Max trilogy of films, begins. Years have passed since the first film, a nuclear war has robbed the world of it's resources, and Max - No longer the humble family man - travels the blasted landscape burnt out and alone. But when a community of villagers is threatened by a vicious band of ruffians, Max's buried soul is slowly drawn out from his ruined identity. 'Road Warrior' is a great film. It uses a tried and true story, but one that is so simple that it is a part of almost every culture. It's every much a western, as the hero faces down the classic posse of villains in a high octane showdown. It also contains threads of the samurai mythos, a lone warrior with his own code of honour, yet bereft of a master and oweing nothing to no one. Also, like Lucas' 'Star Wars' films, many have drawn parallels between this film and the writings of Joseph Campbell. Mad Mel plays Max perfectly, silent and stoic. This was the role made for Gibson, and it would be a shame if he didn't return to it in the rumoured 4th film. The rest of the actors are great as well, proving once again that Australia is a hidden wealth of acting talent just recently mined again with Crowe, Jackman and Pierce. 'Warrior' also gains credit for it's ingenious art design, it's deep innovative look of a leather jacketed, ruggedly punkish, S&M design that has so often been immitated. The current DVD release is nothing special...a decent transfer, some interesting production notes and the trailer. This is a film that needs a Special Edition, just like the original film. A true classic in it's own genre, 'Road Warrior' stands the test of time.
Rating: 
Summary: Glibson
Review: Hard to get involved in a non-story with an indifferent lead. It's basically two hours of car crashes and killing with the production designer as star. Fair dinkums, sport. It's looks pretty dapper on the PC while you're strangling a Croc, or whatever kids do nowadays after school. The message is that when society breaks down human beings will do nothing but kill each other. I think that's a vicious slur on humanity. We torture people first and then we kill them. Actually, they do that it in this film, as well. Bang goes the review.
Rating:
Summary: The perfect example of action serving story.
Review: There are a lot of loud, whining engines in THE ROAD WARRIOR. There are people being killed, maimed and immolated. Of the characters who survive this tale, very few come through without scars. It's a post-apocalyptic nightmare where hope fights despair. The irony of Max's character is that even though he's one of the good guys, he's probably the most desperate of the lot. This is the tale of Max's pain and how he rose above it to become a legend. This is not the same Max we saw in MAD MAX. This Max has been poisoned by tragedy and loss, and the anger of the past has refined into a tiny hard ball of self-involvement. It seems fitting that civilization fell so soon after Max suffered his losses--almost as though when Max lost his place in the world, the world changed to find a new place for him. THE ROAD WARRIOR touches on one aspect of the end-of-the-world scenario that has always fascinated me: if the world ends, how many of the survivors will know how and why it happened? These people don't have time to contemplate that--the once-civilized world has become an enormous hunting ground where the prize is the precious little bit of gasoline that remains. With the world in shambles, the only things left for most people to do are eat, make love, drive really fast, and die. In the midst of all these lost souls, one small group has manufactured hope by restarting a refinery and producing enough gasoline to allow them to escape to a better place. THE ROAD WARRIOR is so far removed from the fallen civilized world it replaced that we don't even get a sense that any of these people even remember what the world was like before. We haven't got a clue what any of them did prior to the fall. (Yes, we know Max was a policeman, but we know that from MAD MAX--it's never really touched upon, here.) In THE ROAD WARRIOR, the conflict has been distilled to an abstraction, with the good guys as desperate in their Hope as the bad guys are desperate in their Despair. It catches you up from the beginning, rocking your screen and your sensibilities with high-speed stuff that, for once, isn't mindless. How long can you survive in a world where people are willing to kill you for whatever gasoline remains in the tank of your car? You bet you'd run, and run fast and hard. It's a horribly Darwinistic world where the desire to hold on to some small facet of the past drives people to lives so pointless they don't even bother to ask why they're living this way. Heaven help you if you actually want to take the tools of the past and use them to build a real future. This is, no question, a 5-star movie in my mind, but it's a 4-star DVD--the print used for the transfer is grainy, and it seems like the illumination was inconsistent. The whole thing feels a bit washed-out. Special features? What's that? For a legendary film like this, it's criminal not to have given us substantial bonus material.
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites.
Review: Before I wathced "The Road Warrior" I was expectitng another good, but not great comic bookish action thriller with a classic superhero. By the end of the movie I was totally blown away. "The Road Warrior" as one of the best naritive drives I have ever sceen and The Road Warriors concept is way ahead of its time.
Aside from "Bravehart" Meal Gibson gives this a 110% good, soild effort. In my opion "The Road Warrior" is far better than
"Mad Max", and you don't even have to watch Mad Max to understand were this movie is coming from, because the movie explains its self so well. BUY THIS ONE!
Rating:
Summary: Slow to start, but builds to an unstoppable rocket ride.
Review: Post-Apocalyptic action thriller stars Mel Gibson as a loner who takes on a bloodthirsty road gang. Very popular action film takes awhile to get moving, but once it does hang on to your seat! The final car chase, a fifteen minute tour-de-force sequence, is the best of its kind in movie history. Overall, this is exhilarating, top-notch entertainment.
**** 1/2 out of *****
Rating:
Summary: An Apocalyptic Cocktail
Review: An incredible apocalyptic fairy tale, George Miller's THE ROAD WARRIOR paved the road for lesser films that followed this mini blockbuster about an ex-cop named Max daring the wastelands of the Australian outback. The film depicts a world gone mad, where those in power maintain their agression not with money but with gasoline ... the only remaining source of power left on the planet. Wandering into a Hatfields/McCoys fued between the last outpost of humanity and a bunch of leather-clad crazies, Max has to decide whether he'll stand alone ... or he'll stand for a purpose. The film's climax is a frenetic truck chase sequence that will, quite possibly, never be rivalled on film.
Rating:
Summary: The best, hands down
Review: This is easily one of the greatest action movies ever made (and, personally, I think it's one of the greatest movies ever made, period.) It is also one of those rare movies that defines its genre, and yet, at the same time, transcends its genre. Actually, you have three different genres being represented in this film that, in the years since, have become intertwined as the norm for this type of movie because of "The Road Warrior"'s influence. You have the much-copied post-apocalyptic wasteland, populated by barbaric savages and helpless victims; you have the classic western and the classic western's "reluctant hero," represented here by Mad Max, the drifting loner, scarred by his past, who only comes to the aid of others when it serves him; and, of course, you have the spectacular car chases, amazing stunts and crashes and huge explosions of the modern action movie. "The Road Warrior" brought all three of these elements together, and you can still see them in movies today, such as the much-inferior "Waterworld" and "The Postman" (man, Costner must've liked this movie too--you'd think he'd get it right eventually.)
And, as an action movie, "The Road Warrior" has yet to be topped. All of the stunts, chases, crashes, explosions you see on the screen are 100% real. No computer enhancement, no technical junk -- when you see a guy drive into a car on a motorcycle and he flies about 75 feet through the air, it's real. And when I say this movie transcends its genre, I'm talking about the style in which it's directed. All of the action becomes almost operatic because of the expert direction and musical score. It comes across as a beautiful-looking action movie, in spite of all the violence and carnage.
I wouldn't hesitate to rate "The Road Warrior" as one of the best action movies of all time and Mel Gibson's Mad Max as one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) action "hero" in cinema history. If this movie were made today, the writers would probably have him cracking lame one-liners throughout the film, but, instead, Max hardly speaks at all (the strong, silent type that also goes with the western genre) -- his actions speak for him. I wish Hollywood at least attempted to make action movies and action movie heroes like this these days (well, come to think of it, I guess they did attempt it with "Waterworld," and that became one of the biggest money-losers in film history, so I guess the moral is: Don't try to duplicate perfection.)
Rating:
Summary: A Genre Gem
Review: The best of the Mad Max trilogy (its predecessor was the cult classic "Mad Max" itself and its successor was the oft-maligned "Beyond Thunderdome"), the post-apocalyptic "Road Warrior" remains a gripping adrenaline-boosted thrill ride nearly two decades after its release. It's been shown dozens of time on cable channels but still is fresh and vivid. The key to its power is the stripped-down nature of the narrative and the use of character archetypes. We don't know much about Max, and we don't have to. He's a wanderer, a loner, a lost soul. We've seen this character many times before, and we already know his motivations and that he'll end up doing right, despite his apparent amorality. The villains are duly villainous, and indeed, memorably vicious. The good guys are appropriately virtuous, but, as the twist ending shows, cleverer and more brutally pragmatic than they seem. Mel Gibson, at this relatively early point in his career, is rightly low-key and subdued, and avoids the self-congratulatory smirkiness of his recent films. Bruce Spence as the daft and opportunistic Gyro Captain also turns in some nice work. Virginia Hey, who later memorably portrayed Zhaan in TV's "Farscape", has a small role here as a warrior woman for the good guys. And who can forget Emil Minty as the Feral Kid? (Actually, I just like saying "Emil Minty".) But really, characters aside, what carries the movie is the epic car chase in the finale, one tanker truck and its handful of defenders versus a convoy of motorcycles, pickups, and dune buggies. Everything about the chase scene is done perfectly, from the performances to the effects to the musical score. This high-speed kinetic ballet careens along full-throttle through a pyrotechnic nightmare of devastation and chaos. It has yet to be topped. Fittingly, the movie ends on a melancholy note, with Max still in the wilderness, a man alone. The now-aged Feral Kid, the narrator, provides the coda: "As for the Road Warrior...he lives now, only in my dreams."
Rating:
Summary: ROAD WARRIOR: Great Action Movie
Review: In the year 1981, a sequel to the 1979 film "Mad Max" was released in Australia and later in America. Mel Gibson returned in his role as Max Rockatanski. But this time more like an anti-hero and a post-nuclear hero rather than a future cop. This movie is quite different from the first. The story has changed a bit by making it during a post-apocalyptic time period as the result from a nuclear war in Australia. This movie seems like it is just an action movie. There is lots of action in it. Max still has the Canyonero he did at the end of "Mad Max" but loses it in this movie. This time he has a traveling companion which is a dog named Dog. He is killed later in the movie which is something Max loses as well. This story is during a time when gasoline is rare and almost impossible to find. Humanity has no hope and a compound of survivors is guarding the last tanker of fuel. Max does happen to become the key to helping the people sneak it out without the scum outside getting it. This is a great movie even though the first one is better. This one does have a big action conlict at the end. This sure is a strange idea for a sequel to the story of the first film though.
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