Mad Max 2 aka The Road Warrior
Director: George Miller
Writer: George Miller, Terry Hayes, Brian Hannant
Sequel to: Mad Max
Cast: Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Michael Preston, Max Phipps, Vernon Wells, Kjell Nilsson, Emil Minty, Virginia Hey, William Zappa
Seen on: 16.5.2015

Plot:
Max (Mel Gibson) stumbles through a postapocalyptic desert, always looking for more fuel to continue his aimless wandering. But fuel, just as food and water, is rare and hotly contested. When Max happens upon a refinery guarded by a small group of people in the middle of nowhere, he can hardly believe his eyes. But he isn’t the only one who discovered that treasure trove. The Humungus (Kjell Nilsson), leader of a motorcycle gang, has also set his sight on it. Since Max himself had a run-in with Humungus’ second in command, Wez (Vernon Wells), he quickly finds himself with the refinery people, fighting against Humungus and his people.

After my being admittedly blown away by the first Mad Max movie, I was very much disappointed by the second one. Despite its cool aesthetics, it just didn’t manage to draw me in and I ended up being bored.

Where the first Mad Max movie was – for me – all about plot and character development, the second one lacks a whole lot of that. This film here is all about the looks and it’s a playing field for Miller to build the aesthetic of the world. Which admittedly looks really cool and very out there in a very 80s way. I liked that a lot.

But unfortunately it wasn’t quite enough to carry the film for me. The lack of character and plot development, or even actual characters that I liked and cared about made this movie start to drag pretty quickly. Which was particularly unfortunate because despite the fact that some time has passed between films 1 and 2, Max still seems to be in that same place like in the end of the first film. There are small hints here and there that things are starting to change now, but I wanted more.

It isn’t all bad of course and not only because that lack of development felt at least rather natural and realistic, even if my wishes went against it. I also really enjoyed the feral child (Emil Minty).

But most of all I enjoyed the post-apocalyptic landscape Miller conjures up and the bigger world than that particular area of desert that is hinted at throughout the film. But it was still far from the level of the first film.

Summarizing: Disappointing.