Mad Max 2 (1981)

Also known as

Road Warrior, The

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Humungus Leather

One of the greatest action movies of all time. And one of the stupidest. It's so very hard to take a villain seriously when he wears nothing but leather underwear and a gimp mask. In the desert.

There's not much story, and no character growth to speak off -- with the exception of the gyro captain, who goes from criminal to slave to Stockholm Syndrome saviour -- but there's a couple of really cool chase scenes. Really cool. What more do you want?

It's for that reason that I consider it the best of the three. Far less ambitious than either Mad Max or Beyond Thunderdome, there's little to distract from Max running around being an action hero. The creators' explicit goal was to create something archetypically Campbellian, and in that they succeeded -- unlike the others in the series, the film's reach does not exceed its grasp.

- Sam - 2006-03-12 01:50:08