Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Two men enter. One man leaves. That's the law in Bartertown's Thunderdome arena. But lawmaker Aunty Entity will soon add another: Don't get Max mad!

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome stars Mel Gibson (Lethal Weapon, Maverick) for his third go-round as the title hero who takes on the barbarians of the post-nuclear future - and this time becomes the savior of a tribe of lost children. Music superstar Tina Turner steals what's left of the screen as Aunty Entity, a power-mad dominatrix determined to use Max to tighten her stranglehold on Bartertown.

Directors George Miller and George Ogilvie deliver another rousing final apocalypse-on-wheels and one of the best movie fight scenes ever, as Max and the gladiatorial Blaster face off with maces, chainsaws and anything not nailed down inside Thunderdome. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome: watch and you'll agree with the soundtrack song the "We Don't Need Another Hero."

Although Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the third part of George Miller's post-apocalyptic Mad Max trilogy, is certainly the least of the bunch (Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is the undisputed masterpiece, and maybe the best action movie ever made), it has still got a good share of imaginative industrial-wasteland-pastiche imagery. And casting Tina Turner as Aunty Entity, the queen of Bartertown, was a masterstroke. Mel Gibson's character Max is pitted in a battle to the death against the bizarre Master Blaster in the Thunderdome, flying around on rubbery straps inside a sort of gigantic overturned colander with bloodthirsty spectators clinging to the outside. Miller's producing partner, Byron Kennedy, was killed in a helicopter crash while scouting locations for this film. Miller was devastated, only agreeing to direct the action sequences--and, somehow, you feel his heart wasn't entirely in it. --Jim Emerson