Vampires: Los Muertos

How does one make a successful sequel to John Carpenter's Vampires without James Woods and his incredibly foul mouth?  Apparently, the answer is by casting Oscar nominee John Bon Jovi as the vampire slayer du jour.  If that doesn't whet your vampire slaying appetite, then howzabout this?  He's backed up by the guy who played Eddie Winslow in Family Matters.  Can I get a "Hell yeah"?

Anybody?  No?

The film opens with Derek (Bon Jovi) doing his thing in Mexico: staking a vampire and dragging it into the sun, so it burns and dies.  Derek is a professional vampire hunter, who is paid for his work by the Van Helsing Group.  Get it?  Van Helsing was the original vampire hunter...and was later adapted into a terrible movie.  Just like this one!  The group offers him a new job through a mysterious benefactor, which doesn't sound suspicious at all.  The job requires Derek to assemble a vampire hunting team; he gets a list of hunters from some vampire hunting priests and goes about recruiting.  There is a problem; every time Derek reaches a hunter, the hunter has just been murdered.  To make matters worse, Derek is getting occasional visions of bloody butchery.  His priest buddies hypothesize that vampires must be linking to Derek.  Eventually, Derek arrives at a diner where the resident hunter hasn't been killed.  Derek makes a bathroom stop while the hunter gets ready to leave and, in the time it take Derek to toss a paper towel away, the film's villainess, Una (Arly Jover), arrives and kills everyone in the diner.

Derek eventually manages to assemble a team that consists of veteran hunter (Darius McCrary), a poor Mexican kid (a slumming Diego Luna), a suspiciously buff priest (Christian de la Fuente), and vampiress that is taking anti-vampire medication (Natasha Wagner).  It turns out that Una is looking for the Berziers Cross, which is the key in a ceremony that can allow vampires to walk in daylight unscathed.  Fans might recognize the artifact from the original movie, one of the few ties this sequel has to its predecessor.  Basically, Una was reading Derek's list telepathically and killing off the local hunters until she finally found someone with the Berziers Cross.  That means that she's his mysterious employer.  Doesn't the Van Helsing Group do even a little bit of research into their contributors?  Like, maybe a questionnaire asking what their favorite flavor blood type is?  Una never finds the cross, but Derek's buff priest has it.  To convince the priest to perform the ceremony that will make Una vitamin D-ready, she decides to go to convoluted lengths.  Reasoning that Derek kind of gives a crap about his pet vampiress, Una plots to get her hands on the anti-vampire medication.  To do this, she approaches the group at night, when only Darius McCrary is on guard.  She pretends to be incredibly attracted to him (this is the middle of nowhere, mind you) and her first act is to fellate him.  I'm a man, too, but if some strung out chick wandered into my campground from the middle of nowhere, I wouldn't be immediately dropping my drawers.  I could just be a prude, though.  Anyway, in a surprise turn of events, when you receive oral sex from a vampire, you get bit.  Darius then begins to follow Una's commands and steals the medicine for her.  Una then uses the medicine to walk in the sun and kidnaps the group's unwilling vampiress.  This is the bait for the final fight.  Will Derek give up the life of a casual acquaintance that doesn't like being a vampire?  Will the buff priest perform the ritual ceremony?  Will Una reign supreme?  Will Family Matters be the peak of McCrary's career?  In order: no, yes, no and yes.

Okay, I'll ask.  If Una is so damn fast, why is Jon Bon Jovi still alive?  She encounters him a couple of times, and he is still left alive.  I get tracking down the cross and keeping a priest alive.  All the others should be inconsequential collateral damage.  Perhaps more to the point, if Una's ultimate goal is to become a daywalking vampire, why doesn't she just start taking the same medication that the unwilling vampire is taking?  And what's with the unwilling vampire?  We later learn that replacing vampire blood through transfusions cures vampirism, which I admit could have been a scientific leap that was only discovered as this movie took place.  I'm fine with that.  My question is what kind of multivitamins are needed to make vampires less vampy?  Echinacea root?  Cod liver oil?  Sugar that causes cavities that attack vampire fangs?  And why is Bon Jovi having visions?  The original movie and this one feature bitten folk having a psychic connection to their vampire donor, but there is never an explanation given as to why Bon Jovi is so lucky.  Does it even matter?  The visions add nothing to the story except maybe five minutes of running time.

Surprisingly, the acting isn't actually all that terrible.  Diego Luna and Christian de la Fuente were both pretty likable.  The rest of the cast was less impressive --- Darius McCrary was especially unconvincing as a tough guy --- but nobody made a direct reference to being wanted dead or alive, or even about living on a prayer, so I'll give credit where it's due.

That credit is definitely not belonging to writer/director Tommy Lee Wallace, whose last theatrical work (direct-to-DVD or otherwise) was Fright Night Part 2.  The story didn't make much sense and the acting ranged from poor to mediocre.  The plot was essentially a retread of the first Vampires, substituting a female for a male head vampire.  Other than that, this was an artful tour de force from a cast and director that deserve to share every star this film earned.

Friday the 13th (2009)

Today is Friday the 13th, so what better way to spend the day than catching up with my favorite movie monster, Jason Voorhies?  This is the eleventh movie in the Friday the 13th franchise (twelfth, if you count Freddy vs. Jason, which I do), but it is allegedly a "re-imagining" of the series.  What does that mean?  Well, it's not an official reboot, but the hacks that brought you the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) and The Amityville Horror (2005) remakes --- Michael Bay and co. --- decided to recycle any ideas they liked from the original series of film and pretend that it doesn't matter, because they started a new film continuity.

Personally, I don't care about continuity between horror films most of the time.  The last two Jason movies (Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X) made absolutely no sense in the greater scheme of things, so continuity is not a big problem for this franchise.

With that in mind, the movie opens with a flashback to Friday the 13th, 1980.  On that date, Pamela Voorhies killed a bunch of camp counselors because she blamed them for her son's death, years ago.  The last counselor manages to kill Voorhies and escape, but she doesn't notice the ugly little boy watching in the woods.  This misshapen lump is Jason Voorhies, who didn't die (which makes his mother's rampage even more ill advised) and takes his mother's body into hiding.  As the scene fades, we hear Pamela's voice urging Jason to kill for her...

Fast forward to the "present day."  Five teens are hiking through the woods, looking for a place to camp.  They pick a place nearby the old Camp Crystal Lake.  Two of the gang have led the group to that location because they got a tip that there is a sweet cannabis crop growing in the area.  Why this source never took the pot, I don't know.  So, at least two of the group are wannabe drug dealers.  The entire group drinks alcohol that night and one couple has sex.  As you might know from previous Jason movies, Mr. Voorhies (Derek Mears) is a little old-fashioned when it comes to teen drug use/drinking/sex.  Jason shows up and kills the living crap out of everyone there, making creative use of a bear trap and the campfire.  Well, he kills almost everyone.  It turns out that one girl, Whitney (Amanda Righetti), is the spitting image of the young Pamela Voorhies.  That means that the lucky gal gets to spend more time with Jason!

Six weeks later (so, for those of you keeping score, this movie takes place in the "present time" plus six weeks), Clay (Jared Padalecki) and his chin are combing the Crystal Lake area, looking for his sister, Whitney.  He encounters a truck full of (future Jason fodder) teenagers.  There are four guys (including Aaron Yoo and Travis Van Winkle), who are all complete jackasses, and three girls, at least two of whom are obvious sluts (Julianna Guill and Willa Ford).  The other girl, Jenna (Danielle Panabaker), decides to be nice to Clay because that's what you do when somebody is looking for his lost, presumed dead, sister.  Seriously, movie kids need to be taught some manners nowadays.  Well, the punk-ass kids are spending the weekend at one of their dad's cabins, which is in the neighborhood.  Clay is going door-to-door to talk about his sister, so he ends up knocking on their door and Jenna decides to join him in his search.  Right about now, Jason decides to start killing naughty teens.  That fills up most of the rest of the movie, until Clay and Jenna manage to find Whitney and decide to fight back.

Like I mentioned before, I am a big Friday the 13th fan.  The movies aren't usually good, but there is a certain sense of justice throughout the series: unlikeable kids do naughty things and get killed for it.  This movie stands out a bit because it tries to act as a reboot, but there is very little re-imagining done.  For starters, the origin story is basically identical to that given in Friday the 13th Part 2.  Jason spends about half of this movie with a bag over his face (like Part 2 and most of Part 3D) before finding his signature hockey mask, but if you ignore that, this could easily be Friday the 13th Part 12.  And I mean that in the nicest way possible.

When I learned that Marcus Nispel was going to direct this movie and it was going to be produced by the devil, I mean Michael Bay, I was uneasy.  Bay ruins movies, whether he produces or directs them, and Nispel directed the Bay-produced Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, which makes my Most Hated Movies Ever list.  Nevertheless, due to stupidity or obstinacy, I watched this film anyway.

And you know what?  It wasn't bad!  The first twenty-five minutes, when the first group of kids gets mowed down, was actually pretty rad.  Within that time frame, I saw an origin story (always helpful), met five new characters, learned to hate four of those characters, and those characters all died.  Short, sweet, and to the point: me likey.  Sure, the movie slows down when they jump to "six weeks later," but there's a killing at least every twenty minutes (thirteen total, a very respectable horror movie total) to keep things interesting.  Following in Friday tradition, there is also some gratuitous nudity in this movie, including five-ish breasts (one set was obviously fake, so the definite number is uncertain).

Despite the body and boobie count, this movie still has some flaws.  Shocking, I know!  This movie tries to serve as a reboot for the series, but the local police and townies know all about Jason: if your friend was last seen near Crystal Lake, they're not missing...they're dead.  And Jason has become part of urban legends, too.  So how much of a reboot can this be, if Jason has obviously been active for quite a while?

Okay, let's pretend that makes sense and move on.  I understand Jason killing the first group of kids.  They were lame and naughty near his turf, so he killed 'em dead.  I have no problem with that, which probably makes me a sociopath.  However, he later kills a local stoner and a cop in addition to going after all the tools hanging out at daddy's cabin.  If Jason hated everyone, why do the locals ignore him?  If he hates all visitors, how did daddy build his cabin and survive?  All I ask for is a modicum of consistency, Mr. Voorhies.

Pop quiz, hot shot: Jason is able to pop up behind unsuspecting victims because A) he is the size of a linebacker B) he built tunnels under all of Camp Crystal Lake C) he's wearing sneakers.  For Sneaking.  The answers are B and or C.  My question is how Jason gets electricity to his tunnels and the camp, even though it has clearly been closed for 20+ years.  And what about those tunnels?  They look handmade, but some have grates on them, but are clearly not sewer drains.  I'm no city planner, but that doesn't make much sense to me.  Of course, Jason collects some of his victims (he only cleans up after himself sometimes) and tosses them into one of his tunnels, but that tunnel has no gross maggots or rats in it.  I guess Jason killed them all, too.

Jason doesn't reavel by tunnel alone in this film.  The man has some crazy teleportation skills on diplay in this movie.  That's okay; that ability was first established (by me) in Friday the 13th Part XIII: Jason Takes Manahttan.  Still, Whitney escapes from her tunnel prison and gets all the way to daddy's cabin, when Jason catches her.  Immediately before and after catching her (and returning her), Jason is murdering the annoying teens at the cabin.  I suppose that teleportation is a little farfetched, but the only other solution I can surmise is that Jason Voorhies has perfected Jetsons-level tube technology and sends Whitney back to the tunnels like a bank deposit.

Phew.  Now that I have all that out of my system, let's look at this movie as a film.  Ha!  I just read that sentence out loud.  Good times.  Well, despite all odds, I am pretty okay with a lot of this movie.  I think the casting was fine.  Jared Padalecki and Danielle Panabaker did a pretty good job carrying this movie, Aaron Yoo was somewhat amusing and Travis Van Winkle deserved to have an awful death, which he received.  The direction is hard to gauge.  I don't want to say that the actors were poorly directed, because they all served their purpose.  However, the film kind of goes through mini-cycles.  The first half hour was pretty awesome.  The next half hour set up the rest of the film, and the last third was pretty stereotypical slasher stuff.  If this movie ended after half an hour, I would say this is the greatest Jason movie ever.  Unfortunately, it kept going.  It's never awful, though it doesn't veer from the traditional Friday formula of most everyone dying, until plucky youngsters finally kill Jason.

I wasn't expecting much from this movie.  Remakes almost always disappoint, but this one definitely had its moments.  Is it great?  Not even close.  Still, it provides gratuitous nudity, a body count with some creative kills, and mostly makes sense.  And I learned things from it!

Somethings I learned from this remake:

• If you are having sex in a tent, but don't want your pervert friend to ogle your silhouettes, just turn off the light in your tent instead of wandering about in the woods, looking for trouble.  That gets you the gift of death via Voorhies.
• There is a huge untended crop of marijuana near Camp Crystal Lake.  Who lives there?  Jason Voorhies.  I guess that makes Jason a pothead.  So what's the lesson?  Don't do drugs, kids.
• The best compliment you can give a girl during sex is to tell her that her breasts "are fucking juicy, dude."  Women love being called "dude."
• When you're in the woods and park your car, take your keys with you.
• Judging from the not-quite-final shots, the filmmakers mourn Jason's passing, showing all the mayhem he caused and didn't have time to clean up after himself.  Why do the good always die so young?
• If you kill Jason, don't remove his mask and toss him into Crystal Lake.  He will jump out of the water (with his mask mysteriously back on) and kill you.

Edge of Darkness

Oh boy!  Looks like it's time for another aging man to take the law into his own hands when bad guys attack his family (see Death Wish, Taken, or Death Sentence for other examples).  Honestly, I am all about revenge as a plot device.  It leads to tough guys being bad-ass and bad guys getting hurt in creative ways.  What's not to like?  Oh, you want character development or subtlety?  Read a book.

Edge of Darkness is the American film version of the classic British television series of the same name.  Boston detective Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) has just brought his adult daughter (Bojana Novakovic) to his home, from the train station, when she gets sick.  They prepare to rush to the hospital, but when they are on the front stoop of Craven's home, a masked man shouts "Craven!" and shoots...but the daughter Craven gets hit instead of Thomas.  And boy, does she get hit!  Wow.  Yeah, it was a shotgun, but that scene was pretty brutal.  Obviously, the police (and Thomas) work under the assumption that the killer was aiming for Thomas and the daughter was an accidental hit.  At least, that was Craven's assumption, until he discovered that his daughter was radioactive.

Huh?  Radioactive?  Really?  Excuse me, how can radioactivity fit into my can't-miss revenge movie formula?  It can't?  Crap.

Yes, Craven's daughter was radioactive and that's why she was sick.  Now, I think we all know that you don't just accidentally get radiation poisoning (unless you're making the film adaptation of XXX-Ray Love: The Marie and Pierre Curie Story).  There's always some evil corporation and/or government behind it.  Such is the case here.  Jack Bennett (Danny Huston) is in charge of the evil corporation, which has strong ties to the government.  The ties are so strong, in fact, that they receive help from the government, in the form of CIA operative Darius Jedburgh (Ray Winstone).  Darius is the guy you send in to cover things up when you don't care how many bodies pile up, as long as the job gets done.

As soon as Craven realizes that his daughter was practically glowing in the dark, he stops acting as a police officer.  He takes evidence from her apartment and burns it, in case it incriminated her as an environmental activist.  Darius decides to pay Craven a visit at this time; he probably should kill Craven, especially since he's a detective that is clearly veering from the law.  This should be the end of the movie.  But, Darius likes the cut of Craven's jib, apparently, and encourages Craven to do whatever he has to do, by any means necessary.  The second half of the film has Craven doing just that.

I didn't think you could make a revenge movie overcomplicated, but director Martin Campbell made it happen.  I just don't understand it.  If this movie had just made the daughter an innocent victim, then Craven would have had to pummel his way through the undoubtedly enormous backlog of thugs that he sent to prison.  That would have been awesome.

Instead, he "detects" his way around and finds all the answers, nice and neat, relatively quickly and painlessly (aside from his daughter and a few other peripheral characters dying).  There is a convoluted cover-up in place, but he has little difficulty getting past it.  And I love that there is a corporation at fault, but Craven finds only one guy to blame.  And he's right!  There is only one person responsible for a radiation-tinged conspiracy.  Do you know how evil you have to be to pull that off?  Skeletor-level evil.  Let's just pretend that corporations occasionally have one evil master that murders innocents in outlandish ways and has the government's help in covering it all up.  If I accept that, I find it incredibly hard to swallow that nobody pulls a grassy knoll on Craven's noggin.

And another thing...who is Craven's boss, Mr. Burns?  Craven says that he's not taking a leave of absence after his daughter dies.  Fine.  He then stops by the police station one more time before ignoring it for the rest of the film.  The police even call him with updates on his daughter's case, but nobody calls and asks if he's running late, or maybe to ask if he's decided to take that leave?  I want that job, right now.  Minus the whole thing with my daughter's blood splatter-painting my front door.

This movie frustrates me because it has a lot of potential.  Martin Campbell is a good action director (he's directed two good Bond movies) and the cast is decent.  Mel Gibson hasn't made a movie in years, but he gets to be a tough guy, which is something he's always been good at.  Ray Winstone takes a role that could be played as disinterested or tired and gives his character some depth; he doesn't demand much of the spotlight, but I appreciated his performance.  The rest of the supporting cast is unspectacular, but not bad.  Jay O. Sanders is decent as Craven's cop buddy, Shawn Roberts does the best he can with a dumb character, and Bojana Novakovic looks somewhat pretty in her limited screen time.  I was majorly disappointed by Danny Huston as the evil corporate head.  It's not just that his character is one-dimensional, or that he would have been less ridiculous if he had tied Craven's daughter to railroad tracks to kill her.  My problem is that  Huston plays this unlikable character as completely unlikable.  There's no wicked charm, or smart remarks.  He's just a douche and you want him to die.

Even with the goofiness of the plot, this is still a decently entertaining movie.  Gibson and Winstone are in fine form, and they make up a good portion of the movie.  This definitely is an underwhelming return to the screen for Gibson, but it's far from his worst work.  It's too bad, really, given what this movie could have been.  Still, if you like seeing old men beat up and kill jerks, then this movie has something to offer.

Green Zone

Yeah, I know...you were really hoping that Green Zone would be a true-story Bourne movie, right?  It's got Matt Damon as the lead and Paul Greengrass directing, so that's not a bad assumption, actually.  Greengrass even mimics the cinematography from The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, so the look and feel of this film matches his earlier work.  Hell, this is even a government conspiracy movie, too!  Unfortunately, Green Zone is based on the non-fiction book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City.  I don't mean to demean the book, but any movie based on a non-fiction account of anything from the Iraq war is going to be heavy on government screw-ups and relatively light on the awesome hand-to-hand combat and driving sequences that helped make the Bourne series so unique.

That comparison may seem unfair, but it's the filmmaker's own fault.  Green Zone is essentially a political conspiracy movie disguised as an action movie.  If they wanted this to be a conspiracy movie, that's cool.  I'm down for some convoluted conspiracy plots.  This film throws in a decent amount of war movie-type shootouts, though, so the action and the political intrigue sometimes seem disjointed.

Since the movie is very plot-driven, with all the twists and turns that implies, I don't want to give away any spoilers; I'll just give a quick recap.  Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is in charge of a US squad looking to capture Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in 2003 Iraq, right around the time where President Bush gave his infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech.  As you might have heard, anyone looking for WMDs in Iraq was going to go home disappointed, and this film is about that.  After finding zip, zero, and nada for a while, Miller begins to openly question the value of the military's intelligence.  This movie deserves some credit for not once making any "oxymoron" comments about military intelligence, despite several obvious opportunities to do so.  Miller begins to dig for the truth behind the intelligence being supplied to the military.  On his side, he has CIA agent Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), a local Iraqi man that is willing to bastardize his given name and be called "Freddie" so stupid Americans don't mispronounce his given name (Khalid Abdalla), and a Wall Street Journal correspondent (Amy Ryan).  On the "Truth?  You can't handle the truth!" side, we have Iraq's resident Pentagon guy, Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), Iraqi General Mohammed Al-Rawi (Yigal Naor), and a Special Ops guy, Briggs (the always evil Jason Isaacs).  Of course, nothing is as simple as Miller would like, so he chooses to bypass the chain of command and wage a one man campaign to capture the truth.

Side note: bypassing military chain of command in military situations has absolutely no negative repercussions, as long as you are Matt Damon.

 As far as the cast goes, almost everyone does a solid job.  I like Damon, even when his role requires him to look frustrated or impassive for an entire movie.  Brendan Gleeson and Jason Isaacs are always entertaining character actors, and they don't disappoint here.  I wasn't familiar with Khalid Abdalla or Yigal Naor, but I thought both did well with surprisingly complex supporting roles.  I was not impressed with Amy Ryan or Greg Kinnear, though.  Ryan's seemingly indifferent performance might be an accurate representation of a journalist (I'll give her the benefit of the doubt), but it makes for a boring character to watch.  Kinnear had the opportunity to play a slimy politician and he does that well.  He kind of overdoes it, though; I'm pretty sure I've seen Cobra Commander display more human complexity than Kinnear did here.

The directing was fine, too.  I like Paul Greengrass as a director.  I liked how the movie looked (kind of gritty) and the pacing of the action.  He was able to capture some pretty good action sequences, as you might expect.  Greengrass is able to make complex plots understandable with his direction, and that was a key to enjoying this movie.

Despite a lot of quality ingredients making up this movie, they don't quite add up.  Part of that is due to the plot and part is due to the presentation.  The plot is effective as a suspense/political intrigue movie.  There's just one problem: the audience already knows that there were no WMDs in Iraq.  Well, maybe I'm wrong...you know the P.T. Barnum quote: “You will never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”  Let's pretend that you don't know about the WMDs.  Even then, the big reveal doesn't deliver the dramatic punch that you would expect it to.  When Miller confronts the person responsible, he is essentially blown off, and the eventual ending is missing the catharsis that the story demands.  Obviously, the hero is going to do something heroic, right?  Even after Miller makes his big play, I was left unsatisfied.

Presenting this movie as a thinly-veiled fictional story about our recent past was probably not the way to go, either.  If they had just mentioned that the names of the people involved have been changed, etc., etc., then the lack of catharsis would be more understandable.  Sometimes, real life doesn't provide the ending you want.  Still, even if the filmmakers had played up the "true story" angle, it wouldn't explain the lack of consequences shown in the film.  I don't want to give anything away, but when the movie ended, I was waiting for some sort of postscript to tell what happened to who after the plot is resolved.  But nothing is added and I was left with the impression that nothing had changed.  That's a bad feeling to have after watching a conspiracy movie. 

This movie was well made and I enjoyed it while I watched.  I just feel that the conclusion was lacking.  That might not be a huge problem for a comedy, but plot-driven movies need to have effective resolutions.  I think the flat-out evil portrayal of Kinnear's Pentagon insider is overly simplistic (I'm fine with him being evil, but at least have him justify his actions!) and Miller's actions had several severe consequences that are brushed over.  I think this is an important story, but it is told in a good-guy vs. bad-guy way that cheapens the message.  Unless the message is "Screenwriters: Stay in school until you cover 'Satisfactory endings' in class."

Mad Max

Guess what, people?  According to this movie, in "a few years from now," we will be entering the post-oil era, where law and order begin to break down before the inevitable zombie apocalypse.  Well, that last part is my own personal belief, but the opening credits to Mad Max say the rest.

This is a film about a warrior --- a road warrior, if you will --- named Max (Mel Gibson) who, as part of the few-years-from-now police force (the Main Force Patrol), cruises the highways of Australia, trying to protect people from increasingly rampant motorcycle gangs.  Max has several moves in his driving arsenal.  He captures one bad guy by playing "chicken" and another by finding him at a crime scene.  While that may not sound too impressive now, wait until just before the zombie apocalypse and let's see how effective the police are then.  Max's competence makes him the hotshot of the MFP, and his arrests make him and his partner, Goose (Steve Bisley), the target of Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne), leader of the worst gang in the area.  Max and Goose capture a few of Toecutter's men, but they are set free because nobody will testify against the gang in court.  This ticks Goose off, so he scuffles with one of the gang members, Johnny the Boy.  Johnny happens to be Toecutter's protege, so the gang focuses on getting even with Goose; in this case, "even" for a couple of punches means "sabotaging his motorcycle and then lighting the leaking gas from his vehicle on fire."  This ticks Max off, so he quits/is sent on vacation.  On vacation, the same gang tries to molest Max's wife and daughter, but gets tired of it and just runs them over in the road, killing them.  I don't want to spoil the ending for you, but it involves revenge and Max earning his "Mad" moniker.

The first question you might be asking yourself is "Isn't Australia a continent?"  Why, yes, it is.  "Wouldn't that make it incredibly improbable for the same people to keep running into each other?"  Actually, no.  The continent/nation of Australia was actually the inspiration for the titular bar in Cheers because everyone knows each others name (presuming your name is Crikey, Walkabout, or Yahoo Serious).  There have been rumors that the country also inspired the film Australia, but when you ask, the nation usually changes the subject.

What do you want?  This is a B movie, pure and simple.  The fact that this movie is intelligible is a feat unto itself; the American theatrical release featured American voice-overs for all the actors and they Americanized much of the Aussie slang.  I don't see why, since the movie (with its original Australian voices) sounds good to me.  I don't mean to imply that B movies can't be good, but pointing out plot holes in a movie like this is no fun.  Yes, they are present, but they don't detract from the film as a whole.

The trait that makes this B movie memorable is how brutal it is.  You see a lot of car wrecks in this movie, and I mean wrecks.  These cars were purchased to turn into scrap, and the filmmakers accomplished that mission.  There are rape scenes (more or less off-screen) and women and children suffering vehicular homicide.  All of that is pretty raw, especially for 1979, but that is just the setup for Max's revenge tour.  To give you an idea, the final scene with the hacksaw has been credited for the idea behind the Saw series.  The violence isn't too shocking to our modern, numbed sensibilities, but this film still stands out as genuinely brutal at times.

If this movie was designed to be known for its violence (a definite possibility), then the acting and directing are pleasant surprises.  This is Mel Gibson's first major role and he does a pretty decent job here.  He's not a revelation or anything, but he plays his part well and comes across as dangerous and intense when he needs to.  Writer/director George Miller did a great job, given his limitations.  Most of the actors are clearly not professional, but Gibson, Keays-Byrne, and Bisley all turn in respectable work, and they are the key roles.

This movie also stands out with its unusual setting.  Even now, using Australia for the setting of a movie is an unusual move, and this film pulls no punches with how brutal the landscape can be.  It is also strange that the movie is neither contemporary not post-apocalyptic.  It's set in the near-future, but nothing terrible has happened...yet.  It's a good excuse to establish a status quo that is a little extreme, but not necessarily requiring elaborate sets and exposition.  It's not a big deal, I know, but I appreciate the fine line this setting proverbially walked.

The fact that this film spawned two (and perhaps a third in the future) sequels is well known.  Traditionally, the first movie in a series is the best, with the sequels usually being bigger and dumber.  Of course, most franchises don't start with a B movie.  This movie is unpolished and not terribly professional, but enjoyable despite that.  This is the kind of movie that should be SyFy-original-movie-bad, but is pleasantly surprising.  If nothing else, this is a worthy precursor to the greatness of The Road Warrior.