For 96 electrifying minutes, The Road Warrior moves with a propulsive fury.  Just about every scene revs with some kind of action, whether its growling engines, screaming punks, or a twirling boomerang.  Even when director George Miller downshifts for a beat of dialogue, the characters are usually prepping for a massive chase scene.  Nothing audio or visual (or vegetable or mineral) is wasted here; everything serves the action.  By Warrior‘s final minutes, all we can do is slump in our chairs, exhausted and awestruck by the adrenaline-soaked madness we have witnessed.

Miller’s plot is so spare, it makes A Fistful of Dollars feel like Downton Abbey by comparison.  Indeed, Mel Gibson’s Max is a post-apocalyptic descendant of Eastwood’s Man with No Name–scowling, cynical, and mostly mute.  Both men are content to let their lean, ruthless survival skills speak for them.  Of course, both franchises follow a similar template, wherein the chilly hero thaws for one shining moment. That may not be for a good time or a long time, but we do get just enough humanity to add meaning to all the visceral action.

In Max’s case, his spiritual pilot light sparks upon the discovery of an isolated community.  Some time in the distant future, these ragtag survivors have built an oasis in the wasteland.  At its center is the most precious commodity in the world: A churning oil derrick.  This never-ending supply of petrol paints a bullseye on the commune, and a raving, roving biker horde lays siege.  These leather-bound bad guys look like American Gladiators crossed with CBGB punk thrashers, replete with football pads, mohawks, and mascara.  

The marauders are led by Lord Humungus (Kjell Nilsson), a bald bodybuilder bedecked in medieval BDSM gear.  He speaks in a gravelly grumble that sounds like it’s been filtered through a spent, stale cigarette.  Humungus offers a pyrrhic proposal to the settlers:  Walk away from the village and the gasoline, and he will spare their lives. Resist and they will perish.  Luckily, Max enters the community with stunning news.  Just a few miles away sits a tanker that can lug an entire tanker of petrol.  If the settlers will fill his own gas tanks, Max will drive the rig through the biker army.  With that, the townsfolk can strike out and find the last slivers of green and blue on this dying planet.

Naturally, Max gains a few allies and meets a few villagers along the way, both of which draw out his humanity.  The Gyro Captain (Bruce Spence) is a jabbering, high-strung pilot, whose twitchy eccentricity hides surprising bravery and resourcefulness.  Early in the film, Max runs across the Feral Kid (Emil Minty).  As the name implies, this little orphan boy was raised by the wasteland, and can only grunt and howl.  He does, however, chuck a deadly boomerang that comes in a handy a few times. The oil community is led by Papagallo (Mike Preston), who might just be savvy and charismatic enough to deliver these people to the promised land.

Now, don’t let all that plot description fool you:  Storywise, The Road Warrior runs on the bare minimum.  Dialogue only fires in short, controlled bursts.  Characters receive almost no backstory.  (The only spritz of information get on Max is an opening recap of the first film.)  Brian May’s score often recedes into the background. Most of the time, we are left with snarling engines and whirling winds.  Miller has often wished for a movie that could be understood on mute.  He gets damn close with Warrior.

Such austere storytelling means more reliance on the lead actors, and Warrior succeeds on that front as well.  As Max speaks very little, Gibson has to carry the film like a star, and he makes it look easy. Every word gets molded to sound more edgy and badass.  Every action scene gets juiced with at least one cool pose.  The first Max made Gibson a name, but this one made him a superstar. (His career meltdown was so swift and ugly, it’s easy to forget what a reliable force of personality prime Mel Gibson could be.)

All the other players exist to add little bursts of Australian weirdness to the proceedings.  The gangly Spence plays the Gyro Captain as an amiable kook who smiles with about 12 teeth too many.  Nilsson’s Humungus has the mannerisms of Mussolini and the traps of Lou Ferrigno.  I even enjoyed Vernon Wells as the berserking henchman Wez.  (In fact, I can safely say no cinematic bad guy has ever committed so many evil deeds with his ass cheeks hanging out.)

With all that said, everything good about this movie is really just a prelude to everything great about it.  Miller fills the final act of the film with one long chase, and it’s a humdinger. We get hot rods, oil tankers, gyrocopters, pipe bombs, and crossbows.  A kitchen sink never flies across the screen, but it may as well have.  Even more remarkable:  This madcap action epic was filmed before the emergence of CGI.  These are real explosions and crashes, as performed by real stuntmen.  With every rewatch, more and more of my appreciation of this movie comes from the wonder that it was filmed, acted, and edited with such meticulous brilliance.

Of course, my love for this mind-blowing experience has never dipped below five stars.  The Road Warrior is one of those movies that made me love movies.  It’s a beautiful piece of nitrous-fueled poetry. If you haven’t seen it, you must.  The Road Warrior is one of the great entertainments in all of cinema history.

96 min.  PG.  Max.