He Lives Now Only in our Memories: THE ROAD WARRIOR (1982)

OK, let's see if I can write the opening narration of The Road Warrior entirely from memory:

"My life fades. The vision deepens. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos, broken dreams, this wasted land. But most of all I remember the road warrior, the man we call Max. To understand who he was you have to go back to another time, when the world was powered by the black fuel and the deserts sprouted great cities of pipe and steel.

Gone now. Swept away. For reasons long forgotten two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze that engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing, their great machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked, but nothing could stem the avalanche. Men began to feed on men. A whirlwind of looting; a firestorm of fear.

On the roads it was a white line nightmare; only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. And in this maelstrom of decay ordinary men were battered and smashed. Men like Max; the warrior Max. In the roar of an engine he lost everything. He became a shell of a man, a burnt out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland.

And it was there, in this blighted place, he learned to live again..."

That was solely from memory, and it's accurate as far as I know. I quoted this opening passage for two reasons. First, to prove that I love The Road Warrior as one of my very favourite films. And second, to show how damned elegant the film is and how it elevates the story of Max from a weird cult action film (1980's Mad Max) into a grand postapocalyptic myth.

The beginning of George Miller's The Road Warrior (known outside North America as simply Mad Max 2) is easily one of the most interesting and engaging introductions to any genre film. The narration quoted above is read over a collage of stock footage of human atrocity and various shots from Mad Max to set the stage, to orient the viewer to the world they are about to enter. At the end of the last line (...in this blighted place, he learned to live again...") the screen fades to black and the gut-punching dinosaurian roar of an engine fills the soundtrack, and the camera pulls out of the engine intake of Max's V8 Interceptor and pans across to reveal Max at the wheel, now in glorious scope widescreen (as opposed to the titles and opening stock footage in the standard academy 1.33:1 ratio).

Miller has dropped us straight into the furious, violent world of Max's postapocalyptic wasteland, all that remains of humanity following the global collapse of civilization after some unnamed disaster. The third film in the series, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, identifies the apocalypse as a nuclear war, but in The Road Warrior we are left to come to our own conclusions -- in our current age it could easily be the end of oil and global warming. The setting is universal enough to always appear to be part of the zeitgeist. What happened is besides the point of course; Miller's film is not a message movie, it is simply concerned with telling a thunderingly kinetic narrative on a canvas of classical myth.

And the opening sequence following the prologue is, naturally, a car chase, with Max (Mel Gibson, in a magnetic lead performance) eluding several punks from the 'Humongous' gang of roaming wasteland scavengers. And this ain't no CGI. This is the capricious, torturous scream of metal on metal, real stunt drivers doing genuine stunts, a showcase for the immersive texture that authentic stuntwork brings to a film, something far more adrenalizing than pixellated substitutes vectorized together by a team of computer nerds could ever hope to be. As the first sequence demonstrates, The Road Warrior is one of the all-time great vehicular stunt films.

A great example of lean cinematic narrative, too, is this opening. With no dialogue and a simple directorial style, Miller shows us that Max is completely alone, that he exists solely to find gasoline to continue driving the wastelands, that he is a force to be reckoned with, and that his car is his lifeline. It also sets up a plot point for later in the film. Like I said, economic.

Speaking of economic, it's not until about 10 minutes or so in that we get the first line of dialogue, cult Australian actor Bruce Spence (who later turned up in The Matrix Revolutions and The Return of the King extended version) as the Gyrocaptain hopping rodent like on the scalding hot desert sand, thinking he's got the drop on Max. The tables are soon turned, of course, and the Gyrocaptain drives the story proper into gear by introducing Max to a remote oil refinery that is guarded by a ragtag group of survivors lead by the strong-willed Papagello against the Humongous, led by the Lord Humongous and his henchman Wez (who Max encountered in the opening), desperate to possess the precious juice.

The Road Warrior unfolds as an action film version of the classic, enduring lone hero myth, whereby a wandering hero reluctantly aids his fellow humans and in so doing causes the rebirth of a part of his world. With very few lines of dialogue, Gibson builds a magnetic screen character, carrying Max from the bleak ending of the first film, driving aimlessly after slaughtering the killers of his family, into the logical place he would be in this film. As the opening says, "a burnt out, desolate man."

That a seemingly unsympathetic, unfeeling character becomes an attractive screen hero is a testament to Gibson's performance, the spare but effective writing, and Miller's careful direction. The story takes Max on a journey, forcing him into helping the survivors escape the Humongous and the wasteland and, however reluctantly, transforming him into the saviour of this lone band. Even if we haven't seen the first film (and I hadn't when I first saw this second installment), we get the sense that Max is scarred and hurting inside, that his seeming indifference to fellow humans is a defence against ever having someone precious taken away again. And so a laconic, mean bastard like Max becomes a sympathetic hero that we root for. It really is extraordinary how The Road Warrior pulls this off.

The film is elevated considerably by a unique and memorable cast of supporting characters. Vernon Wells creates one of the great screen villains in Wez, formidably built, growling in a low monotone, mohawked, and outfitted like all the outlaw gang in post-punk uniform scavenged from the "corpse of the old republic." The Lord Humongous, leader of the gang, is a hockey-masked gladiator with a build like Schwartzenegger. The Gyrocaptain is the film's sole comic relief, a jumpy, quirky character who takes an incredible amount of punishment from Max and still bounces back wanting to be his partner. Then there's the Feral Kid (Emil Minty), a wild child who survives in the wasteland by hunting with a razor-sharp boomerang, and who views Max as a father figure. The community in the refinery has several notable characters, including the mechanic that seems to spend his time hanging in a sling from a mini-crane and his slightly dizzy assistant; a war-helmeted, eccentric old man; a gorgeous amazonian warrior woman (who, confounding cinematic cliche and our expectations, does not become Max's new love interest); and Papagello, the strong-willed, articulate leader.

The Road Warrior builds steadily, deliberately to its astounding final setpiece -- a 20-minute chase sequence with Max at the helm of a huge tanker containing the prized gasoline, pursued by the outlaw gang, with Wez at the head, aching for blood. It's one of the great sustained action sequences, a thunderous, unrelenting crunch of car stunts and violence, ingeniously and imaginatively staged, sharply and coherently edited, and brought to life with exhilarating stuntwork. It ends the film with cathartic, satisfying bombast.

And the coda of the film cements Max as a mythic hero, the terrific final shot a pullback from Max while the narrator intones "And the road warrior? That was the last we ever saw of him. He lives now only in my memories." As a bookend it works effectively to give a sense that this is a story that has been told to us as Homer told the story of Odysseus, and that it is a tale that will be repeated through the generations.

The Road Warrior scales heights that few action films do. The recent Blu-Ray release of the film is stunning in its clarity. Small details are now visible, such as a vein pulsing on the head of the Lord Humongous, and the whole movie has a more film-like appearance. It's a significant upgrade to the old laserdisc version I own, and is highly recommended to fans of the film. Curiously, the title of the film on this print is Mad Max 2, and it appears to have a few seconds of additional gore, so perhaps this is an international version that was cut in North America.

The Road Warrior stands easily among my top ten favourite films.

Off Topic: "Can the rest of us have our planet back?"

This is totally off the topic of movies, but I think it's hilarious. This is comedian Marcus Brigstocke on BBC Radio 4:

Gone Baby Gone

Directed by Ben Affleck
Written by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane
Starring Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, John Ashton, Amy Ryan

Actor Ben Affleck makes an impressive directorial debut in the engrossing dramatic thriller Gone Baby Gone. Though shot in a simple, no-frills style, the film layers on moral complexity until the protagonist is forced to make an agonizing decision that could affect a life forever and has to live with the nagging uncertainty that his choice was wrong.

Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michello Monaghan), partners in a private investigation business and also lovers, are asked to help the Boston police in searching for a missing four year old girl by the kid's aunt Bea McCready (Amy Madigan). The little girl's mother Helene McCready (Amy Ryan) is the starting point in Kenzie and Gennaro's investigation, and is revealed to be far different than the press' portrait of her as a saintly grieving mother. Young and somewhat naive, Kenzie connects with some of the people he knows from growing up on the streets of Boston, and quickly finds that Helene's drug and alcohol abuse may be key factors in the disappearance.

Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) leads the special police unit that handles kidnappings, Doyle himself the victim of the kidnapping of his child that went fatally wrong. Doyle orders his two lead investigating officers, Bressant (Ed Harris) and Poole (John Ashton) to cooperate with Kenzie and Gennaro, the two PIs quickly proving able to make connections on the street that are closed to the cops.

But everything is not as it seems. Gone Baby Gone winds its serpentine way through a complex story that finds that the moral certainties we hold are shot through with so many veins of grey that making the right choice is not only near impossible, it is almost undesirable. The story argues that even righteous, just choices are usually made for the wrong reasons. In such a moral minefield, Kenzie can only hope to survive, and he is ultimately helpless in the soul-eroding tides that buffet him.

Director Affleck and photographer John Toll (who also lensed Terrence Malick's phenomenal The Thin Red Line) capture the streets and the people of Boston with convincing, personal immediacy. A sequence involving a raid on a dingy house, which turns into a nightmarish headlong flight and a confrontation with pure human evil, is particularly nail-biting, accomplished with a lean and spare shooting and editing style. On the strength of this film, Ben Affleck has a successful career as a director ahead of him.

The dialogue crackles, and it is delivered by a superb cast, with Ed Harris in particular at the top of his game. Casey Affleck shines as the main protagonist, projecting a core naivete that is dragged through the ringer as he is forced to confront some agonizing choices. Harris and Affleck share a scene that sparks with vitality and drama -- and it is all acting and dialogue. It all leads up inevitably to a final agonizing choice, and a final shot that is searingly effective in its simple ability to provoke discussion over the viability of that choice.

Gone Baby Gone is a smart, involving slice of neo-noir.

2007: Films of the Year

Yeah, it's another one of those lists that pop up and parthenogenetically propogate through various publications at the beginning of every year. What were the best films of last year, or more accurately, here's what moved me at the cinema in 2007. While such exercises may get tedious to some, a best of list affords a time for reflection on the medium of film and gives cause to hope that in the midst of the drool-cup mass consumption pablum there are great examples of pure cinema out there and still getting made and distributed.

My 2007 list contains some films that were distributed in late 2006 in limited release but didn't make it to cinema screens here until 2007, but such is the sad state of film distribution -- if you don't live in one of the handful of key big cities for movie releases, then you're likely screwed.

Thank goodness for DVDs. And now Blu-Ray discs (I'm a recent convert).

Anyway, here's the cinematic highlights of 2007 for me.

Pan's Labyrinth -- Fantastic film auteur Guillermo Del Toro's utterly captivating, profoundly moving, richly symbolic, and immersively imaginative dark fantasy has quickly become one of my very favourite movies. It's one of the crowning achievements of fantasy cinema, a work of such heartbreaking and layered artistry that it can stand with the great works in any artistic medium. Someone let this guy loose on his adaptation of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness NOW.

Children of Men -- A truly great work of science fiction, based on P.D. James' novel, that creates a chilling and utterly believable future world where women have stopped giving birth and the human race is slowly dying, populates it with interesting characters, and pulls us along in a propulsive and thrilling storyline. Director Alfonso Cuaron brings several vivid sequences to life, including an astonishing one-take action scene that is one of the best recent examples of pure cinema.

Zodiac -- David Fincher's absorbing and beautifully filmed police procedural about the obsessive hunt for the Zodiac killer in '60s/'70s era San Francisco is an instant classic and can easily stand with the enduring examples of its genre from 1970s American cinema. Though the film sadly tanked at the box office, I'm tempted to say that, Pan's Labyrinth aside, Zodiac was the best film I saw at the theatre in 2007.

Eastern Promises -- Singular filmmaker David Cronenberg brings his stark, disturbing but humanistic vision to a crime story set among the Russian mafia in London. Actor Viggo Mortensen reunites with Cronenberg after the superb A History of Violence and the result is an interesting departure for the cerebral director. It doesn't quite escape it's rather ordinary narrative origins, but is elevated by Cronenberg's direction and some vivacious performances, and contains one of the great hand-to-hand fight sequences.

American Gangster -- Master stylist Ridley Scott is in such control of recreating time and place that you can almost reach out and touch the cinematic textures. In such surroundings Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington shine in another retro-'70s crime thriller that thankfully leaves aside thundering action for story and character. Crowe is a rare combination of star and actor.

The Mist -- Stephen King's spine-tingling novella about an ominous mist that descends from Lovecraftian dimensions dragging vicious beasties with it and traps a group of townsfolk in a supermarket is finally brought to the screen by master King adapter Frank Darabont. Thomas Jane and Marcia Gay Harden head up an effective cast and the story is as much about the disintegration of civilized discourse and the seduction of religious fanaticism as it is about horrific monsters. And the sucker-punch of an ending, with its Twilight Zoneish dark irony, is unforgettable.

Sunshine -- Perhaps not a great film, but certainly an outstanding one whose vivid imagery has stayed with me. It is rare for modern SF cinema to consist of anything other than action films, but Sunshine has the tenacity to be about ideas and visual poetry and dramatic tension.

Unfortunately No Country for Old Men vanished from theatres here so quickly that I missed my chance to see it, and P.T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood has yet to open. I predict that these two films will appear on my best of 2008 list.

2008 brings some potentially great films: Bond 22, The Dark Knight, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Pixar's Wall-E, and Iron Man. Let's hope that some of these at least live up to expectation.