Review of Mad Max 2 (1981) by Rob S — 25 Jul 2015

What a damn good sequel. Just like many action movie sequels, this one upped the stakes so much more than the first, and I think this darker side of Max intrigued me more, trying to be independent ever since the death of his family.

The movie opens with an educational film aesthetic, which briefly tells us more about this post-apocalyptic world than we learned from the first. A main problem is a shortage of gasoline, and this becomes an obsession of Max's from the start of the film as he tries to get to wherever he is going.

Of course, this wouldn't be a Mad Max film if a rival biker gang didn't show up, so, of course, one does. Max finds himself in the middle of a small war between a community which has a good portion of gas to help themselves out, and a ruthless biker gang set out on resorting to violence if need be for the gas owned by the community which has set up their own base. Max just wants to drop off a near- dead member of the community for a supply of gas, but this community needs help, and Max struggles to decide whether to help them against these dangerous bikers or not.

I love how Max is pretty silent in this film, not giving away a lot of what is on his mind, remaining kind of an emotional mystery in a sense. We assume he has trust issues after the recent death of his family, but we do not need to hear it from Max to understand its hold on him.

I was not a fan of the visuals in the first film, but I think this one has a slightly better style. There are still fast cuts as in the first, especially in the action sequences, but I think we are able to see things happen more easily than we could in the first. One problem I had with the original was that we never lingered on many visuals, but this film seems to do this more, lingering on extremely wide shots of the landscape for us to take everything in, and the editing style even slows down during conversations to focus on the drama of the rivalry situation within the film.

I enjoyed this film, especially since it had a much more epic scale than the first in my opinion. I am looking forward to Fury Road!