***Fighting for fuel in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the Outback***

In the years after a global holocaust, an ex-lawman (Mel Gibson) in remote Australia befriends people at a refinery compound and helps them escape a band of ruthless punk bikers who want their resources. Bruce Spence plays the Gyro Captain while Vernon Wells is on hand as a subordinate leader of the bikers.

"The Road Warrior,” aka “Mad Max 2” (1981) shows a grim, bleak, brutal future, but it's too comic booky and sometimes goofy to truly disturb because it screams exaggeration. A truly disturbing movie debuted fifteen years earlier, “The Wild Angels” (1966), which is shocking because it’s realistic rather than cartoonish. But “The Wild Angels” was an outlaw biker drama whereas “Mad Max 2” is an action-packed adventure. There’s a lot of motorhead thrills if that trips your trigger.

The movie’s an Australian production and avant-garde bordering on surrealism. The protagonist is aloof and laconic while the antagonists are bizarre, even psycho, which makes sense in that people would become a little mad in a desperate post-apocalyptic environment. It’s a strangely detached film about cartoonish people surviving in the wastelands of Australia, but the characters and images are often iconic; and there IS some human interest, like the Gyro Captain’s developing relationship with the cute blonde, the so-called Captain’s Girl (Arkie Whitley). Meanwhile Virginia Hey is striking as the Warrior Woman.

The film runs 1 hour, 34 minutes and was shot in the Outback of New South Wales, Australia.

GRADE: B