The Road Warrior - 1981 - 3½ Stars

Actors: Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence
Director: George Miller

The Road Warrior is both silly and tense, as any good post-apocalyptic film should be. An apocalypse is silly, and predicting what comes after it sillier still - thus we get a blasted desert filled with people fighting over remaining gasoline stockpiles.

Mel Gibson's Max carries on a proud tradition of action heroes who don't say much. Any scenes with exposition are chopped down to their barest essentials, so we can get to scenes with leather-clad, vaguely punk-ish marauders. Questions like, 'How do people find water in this desert?' go happily unanswered, since that's both boring and hokey and doesn't involve people dressed like a Gwar cover band. This would rank high on a list of must-see films for 13 year old boys, where heavy action, gratuitous nudity and a slightly askance view of human nature are needed - all are represented here.