MAD MAX 2

(vt The Road Warrior)

   Film (1981). Kennedy Miller Entertainment. Dir George MILLER, starring Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Emil Minty, Mike Preston, Kjell Nilsson. Screenplay Terry Hayes, Miller, Brian Hannant. 96 mins. Colour.

   The success of the first film in this series, MAD MAX (1979), generated a bigger budget for this, the second. It was well used, and this is a more sophisticated film, more purely sf than its predecessor. The oil wars have left a devastated world; petrol is a medium of exchange, and its conspicuous use - by burning it up on the roads - confers status. Ex-policeman Max Rockatansky (Gibson) gives reluctant assistance to asemicivilized group in a desert fortress. Possessing a valuable petrol supply, they are beleaguered by a tribe of marauders (who, in this Westerns replay, are effectively the Indians), designer-barbarians infetishistic gear on motorbikes and vehicles of war. Made with poker-faced humour, and this time with the US prints allowed to retain Mel Gibson's Australian drawl, the film is enlivened by small details - e.g., the FeralKid (Minty) with his razor-sharp metal boomerang - and has much to recommend it beyond the tautly directed scenes of vehicular warfare. Poignant use is made of memories when times were better. The name of thesleazy real-world coastal resort Surfer's Paradise is now only half-remembered, as "Paradise", and ironically the place becomes the Promised Land to which the civilized remnant (minus the loner, Max)finally treks. With all its comic-strip energy and vividness, this is exploitation cinema at its most inventive.

   PN