The Road Warrior (1981)

THE FLICK: You won’t find many people who’d debate The Road Warrior’s status amongst the best action films ever made. Words can’t describe the experience. Perhaps that’s because director George Miller uses so few of them, preferring to construct his apocalyptic sequel to Mad Max with bravura action set-pieces, culminating in a relentless 20-minute chase sequence that will likely never be topped in the history of cinema. Bold statement, I know. But The Road Warrior (or Mad Max 2 as it’s known in Australia and now presented uncut on Warner’s remastered Blu-ray DVD) is the sort of bold filmmaking that only happens every 50 years or so. It’s a film that quite literally cuts to the chase, introducing its players in broad but colorful strokes and defining their character through action rather than words. Its success launched a myriad of apocalyptic copycats, but none of the could replicate the full-throttle, vehicular mayhem Miller put on screen...not even Miller himself in the next sequel, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome five years later. Mel Gibson creates a surprisingly complex character with Max, the epitome of anti-heroes; an ex-cop whose family was destroyed by a rampaging street gang, now driving aimlessly through the outback in V8 Interceptor in search of a few drops of gasoline to keep going on his road to nowhere. Of course, the film never really tells us any of this (unless you can read between the lines of the brief prologue), but it’s there in his performance. And the film courageously never bothers to slow down, from the first widescreen zoom in on a highway POV to the final dolly back down the same lonely stretch of road. Miller casts Max in the role of reluctant hero straight out of a John Ford Western, helping society make that violent transition from frontier savagery to domestic civilization. And just like Ethan Edwards in the final shot of The Searchers, there’s no place for a man like that in our brave new world. THE FEATURES: This is the sort of release that is sure to inspire quite a few hi-def converts. Warner comes through with a richly detailed and freshly scrubbed transfer on Blu-ray. The Australian sky is literally so blue you could dive right in, and everything from the flies to the dust to the veins on the back of Humungous’ head just pop out with enhanced clarity. It’s not flawless though. One or two scenes suffer from heavy grain (likely from optical transitions in the source material) that were probably beyond restoration. Overall, however, it’s a doozy of an improvement over the standard-def version released in the DVD format’s infancy. And to make the pot even sweeter, there’s a George Miller / Dean Semler commentary exclusive to the hi-def release. That, along with the ported over Leonard Maltin introduction and theatrical trailer, make for one hell of a ride!