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42. The Road Warrior - Final Chase

“The juice. The precious juice…”

It’s one thing to have a car chase. It’s another to have a fight scene. This is one of the most successful sequences to go all Reese’s peanut butter cups with that shit. And where most action sequences end with a big-ass explosion, this one gets the party started with one. The largest ever created for an Australian film at the time.

One thing that’s often forgotten about writer/director George Miller’s 1981 Mad Max sequel is the utterly gorgeous cinematography by Dean Semier. His photography evokes the bullet ballet equivalent of a demolition derby. The aerial camera work in particular is astonishing.

The sheer desperation of the sequence sells it. Our heroes are outgunned, outmanned and outsavaged by the baddies, and their seemingly Tonka tough rig is picked apart man by man like a slasher film in precis. Nobody dies well in this sequence. It’s the like the most fucked-up game of Mario Kart ever.

Also, you’ll be hard-pressed to come up with another sequence that features double-fisting crossbows and a feral kid.

Here’s Part One:

Here’s Part Two:

See also: Nick Cage and Holly Hunter vs. the “warthog from hell” in Raising Arizona, the entire chase from Cyberdine to the smelting pot in T2, car vs. car in Die Another Day, Road Warrior climax redux in Beyond Thunderdome.

Next: Ripping off Once Upon a Time in China has never been this fun.