Mad Max: Beyond Scotland

Rating: 5/10 (12 May 2005)

I shall try to outline the plot in the simplest possible way: Mel Gibson lives a quiet life. He falls in love with a pretty girl, and they get married. But all is not well in the world, and Mel's wife is murdered smack in the middle of their honeymoon. Mel flips out and seeks revenge, not only on his wife's killer, but on just about everyone else who was directly or indirectly complicit in her death, which includes the entire population of England.
Instead of an awesome car and a sawed-off shotgun, this time he's got a huge sword and blue warpaint. Otherwise it's the same story. It doesn't end too well, and there were no sequels.
However, there are other parallels to earlier Mel Gibson flicks: for example, the English villains are either violent sadists or homosexuals, just like the baddies in The Road Warrior. Like those movies, Braveheart is also pretty gruesome.
There have been rumors that this movie was a historical epic, but don't be fooled: it's a revenge pic, longer and a little more bloodthirsty, but still just a B-movie. Fans of film history and TCM will note many parallels to Stanley Kubrick's superior "Spartacus" (such comparisons are not to Gibson's benefit).