George Miller: Ranking His Movies From Worst To Best

2. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

If Mad Max gave George Miller the confidence and a confirmation that he was onto something special with his approach to filmmaking, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is the result of a decision to just keep on truckin' - to put his foot on the pedal as hard as he could, taking the franchise to the sorts of heights that few action directors ever get to go. So without any sense of hyperbole, The Road Warrior really is an action movie masterpiece unlike any other, and one that continues to top the polls for "Best Action Film" even today (indeed, the readers of Rolling Stone magazine voted it as such as recently as last month, beating out classics such as Die Hard and Terminator 2: Judgment Day in the process). Mad Max 2 is the very definition of a sequel stepping-up to improve upon its predecessor in the best and most natural way. Here, Mel Gibson hones his performance as the iconic hero of the title as he transforms into a wandering mercenary in the vein of Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name; not quite good, not quite bad, but somewhere in the middle. Miller's directorial powers are at their peak here, too: there's an opera to the mindless violence and mayhem, which - rather oddly - imbues Mad Max 2 with a sense of the poetic. Miller might relish the sight of blood and sand at every given opportunity, but his camera work - and the cinematography - makes it so rhythmically delicious that it feels like more. And then, of course, there's that final car chase - the best, most nail-biting and visually stunning action sequence Miller has ever produced and a tour-de-force of madness. Indeed, it might well be the best action sequence of the 1980s - or perhaps of all-time.