Mad Max 2

Mad Max 2 (1981) begins at the point where the world has collapsed after the first film, and almost all of it happens on the road. Petrol is now worth more than money. Max wanders the desert alone. A small community has fortified itself around a refinery and a gang waits outside. Max agrees to help them, not out of heroism but for fuel. Max barely speaks. There is a handful of lines; the story is told entirely through movement and image. George Miller had been an emergency doctor before this and knew road accidents closely. That is where the sense of reality in the crashes comes from; nobody falls cleanly. The tanker chase in the last twenty minutes became the lesson action cinema studied. Nothing digital; real vehicles at real speed. One stuntman was seriously injured. Because the first film was little known in America it was released there as The Road Warrior. It was made on an Australian budget and left a worldwide mark; the visual language of post apocalyptic film for the next thirty years was set here. It works without the first film; there is a summary at the start. It runs 96 minutes. Good for: action, post apocalypse, and practical effects. Less good for: the violence is harsh, there is little character depth, and the first half hour is dry.