Days in the Sun

The Road Warrior (1981)
directed by George Miller
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Carnegie Library

In an early scene, Max scavenges for gasoline from the leaking tank of a wrecked 18-wheeler. He puts down anything shaped like a basin: a hard hat, an inverted Frisbee, maybe a plate. The Frisbee and hat are so dusty with red sand that the first drops of fuel look like the start of the rainy season. But no one drinks anything in The Road Warrior. How is water not the resource that everyone needs most in the desert?

When all is said and done, I prefer Mad Max.  Mad Max is a horror film set in a mostly recognizable, slightly fantastic rural landscape. The Road Warrior is a western with scope and scale. More binoculars, plenty of canyons and beautiful vistas, a single line of isolated footprints shot from the air. But out on the highway, no one gives chase the way he used to. These are cars and dune buggies, not motorcycles, and they're armored liked dinosaurs. Villains swarm more than strike, denying me the pretty hum of an open engine and the vision of a mounted camera racing a band of gold.

I enjoy the North American prologue, just like I prefer The Road Warrior to the original title Mad Max 2. The voiceover recasts this new world efficiently, then cuts away, for the first and only time, to Max and Dog speeding down the road. What a dog! But once Max arrives at the refinery - once he trades endless chase for siege - he's hobbled. Max isn't a drifting rōnin, he's a speed junkie with a chip on his shoulder. And I like his pure self better: the Great Western Railway bent on simple-minded revenge.