Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2023.07

These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and made the list of around 1600 ratings publicly available. I’ve included the individual ratings with my notes for each movie. These ratings are not absolutely comparable to each other—I rate the film on how well it suited me for the genre and my mood and. let’s be honest, level of intoxication. YMMV. Also, I make no attempt to avoid spoilers.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) — 7/10

It’s amazing to see what a feature science-fiction film could look like in the 80s. It kind of looks like the TV show sometimes, with the focus on the acting, dialogue, and plot rather than CGI effects.

This film picks up right where Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan left off, after Khan (Ricardo Montalbán) had detonated the Genesis device. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) had died saving the others and his casket had been sent down to that planet. In this film, McCoy (DeForest Kelly) starts acting strangely, going into occasional fugue states where he seems to be channeling Spock’s memories.

Meanwhile, on the planet, David Marcus (Merritt Butrick) and Saavik (Robin Curtis) are on the Genesis planet, observing its chaotic development—and it’s increasing instability. Lifeforms are charging through their lives at an incredible pace. They find a young Vulcan, whom they can only assume is a resurrected Spock, but without his life experiences and his memories. The child quickly develops into a teenager, then becomes a man as he undergoes the Vulcan adolescence ritual at an incredibly accelerated rate.

Klingon captain Kruge (Christopher Lloyd) is sniffing around, trying to get control of the Genesis device, leading to a standoff with Kirk—who ends up sacrificing the Enterprise in a self-detonation in which he’s trapped most of the opposing Klingon crew. The Enterprise crew, meanwhile, has beamed to the disintegrating planet, where Kirk and Kruge fight—mano a mano—to Kruge’s death.

Kirk and his crew fly the partially disable Klingon Bird of Prey to Vulcan, where they deposit Spock’s memories from McCoy’s mind back into Spock’s body. The process is mostly successful, but will take time to complete.

Joker (2019) — 10/10

My rating from a prior review is unchanged. Amazing film.

Watched it in English with French subtitles.

I Love You, Man (2009) — 7/10

This is a great cast: Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) is a nice guy who has not male friends. He’s going to marry Zooey (Rashida Jones), who has a lot of friends, Denise (Jaime Pressly) (who’s married to Barry (Jon Favreau)), Hailey (Sarah Burns). His fencing colleagues Eugene (Aziz Ansari) and Larry (Nick Kroll) don’t see him as a friend. His coworker Tevin (Rob Huebel) is a dead-end. After several bad “dates”, Lonnie (Joe Lo Truglio), organized by his gay brother Robbie (Andy Samberg) and Doug (Thomas Lennon), organized by his mom Joyce (Jane Curtin) and his dad (J.K. Simmons). Peter finally meets Sidney (Jason Segel).

“J.K. Simmons My best friend, Hank Mardukas.”

Peter and Sydney hit it off amazingly well, but Peter starts to become filled with self-doubt and sees danger and subterfuge in small details—especially after Zooey tells him that he’s now spending an unhealthy amount of time With Sydney. He cuts of the relationship. Sydney borrows $8000 from Peter and Peter is worried that he’s spent it on frivolous investments—until he discovers that Sydney has bought billboards for Peter all over the city.

Peter starts to feel bad that he’s broken up with Sydney, especially after Lou Ferrigno signs back up with him after having seen the billboards. He doesn’t reinvite him to the wedding though, going without a best man instead. Zooey calls Sydney to show up—and Sydney picks up while in a tux, on his Vespa on the PCH, clearly headed for the wedding already.

Game Night (2018) — 6/10

This is a movie about Max (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Rachel McAdams), who are absolute game nuts. They’d bet during a bar-trivia contest and fallen in love immediately. The movie is littered with references to various game-related things they’d done on vacations over the ensuing years. They’re married and trying to have a baby, but Max’s sperm count is low—because of his feelings of inadequacy toward his more-dynamic brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler).

Brooks organizes a game night that involves a kidnapping, but it’s interrupted by a real-life kidnapping executed by people to whom Brooks owes money, The Bulgarian (Michael C. Hall). It gets more complicated, as they slowly discover that the game is actually real, having “solved” a bunch of it with no fear because they thought that it was not. On top of that, a former game-nighter who is no longer invited Gary (Jesse Plemons), is also running a fake game night to get revenge on them for having dropped him. He was hoping to get back into their good graces by proving what a cool game-master he is. He gets shot by the Bulgarian’s henchmen.

They end up rescuing, then selling, a WITSEC list. Brooks ends up under house arrest, and hosts another game night as shadowy forces gather outside. I’m sure they thought that there would be a sequel. I doubt there will be. The movie wasn’t that good. I gave it an extra point for Jason Bateman’s deadpan performance.

There are a bunch of sub-plots and jokes with the other couples, but only Sharon Horgan is actually very interesting.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) — 10/10

I love nearly everything about this movie. All of the players are so good. See my review from early 2016.

I saw it in German this time, though it doesn’t matter so much, as there’s nearly no dialogue.

Total Recall (1990) — 8/10

The movie starts with the full credits. It’s super-confident that people are going to stick around without even getting a taste of the action. The movie starts with Doug Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in bed with his wife Lori (Sharon Stone). Director Paul Verhoeven certainly knows how to make a love scene. Stone is sexy and even Schwarzenegger can’t ruin it.

Douglas Quaid goes to work, but ends up at Recall, an agency that helps you “remember it wholesale.” He chooses the femme fatale, getting excited about being with a hot woman—didn’t he just say that he’s been married to Sharon Stone for eight years? Sharon Stone in her prime? Didn’t they just have morning sex?

Anyway, he gets into the machine, but something about his fantasy about going to Mars goes absolutely sideways. The entire staff has to calm him down and ends up throwing him out, leaving him with only vague memories of what happened. Once outside, he meets a buddy from work, who ends up trying to kill him, along with a bunch of other thugs. Quaid takes them all out. Is this happening? Was the “emergency” at the Recall offices real? Or was that just the start of his fantasy?

He gets home to Lori, who’s pissed that he went to Recall. She also rolls her eyes when he tells her about Mars. Perhaps she knows that his buried memories are real. She does. She calls Richter (Michael Ironside). She must get orders to take him out because she starts shooting at him, then beats the crap out of him—focusing on the family jewels. Now it’s a knife-fight. She’s slashing away, adorned in her 80s-style aerobics outfit.

He gets her at gunpoint. She admits that she’d never seen him before six weeks ago. She tells him he’s an agent with a memory implant—that his life is just a dream. She doesn’t know who he is; she just works there. He was her best contract, then offers to bang him one last time—but only to buy time for the backup team to arrive. Clever girl.

Richter shows up, asking Lori what Quaid remembers. “Nothing.” They kiss. What?!?

Quaid is on the run. Richter and his goons give chase. After a bit, the weapons open up on the escalators. There are giant, bloody squibs everywhere. Like, it’s seriously, awesomely, and convincingly gory. The effects are much, much better than I expected. They held up really well, for the most part. When he’s pulling the tracker out of his nose, it’s pretty convincing. The trick with the probe in the rat was pretty neat, and who cares if the graphics on that guy’s tracker look dated? The concept works.

Quaid’s on Mars now. I kind of like that Richter was not only stupid enough to have a projectile weapon in a pressurized environment, but that the movie showed the consequences immediately—he blows out a “window” and a whole section of the immigration area has to be closed down.

Quaid meets up with Melina (Rachel Ticotin), who identifies him as Hauser. She ends up sending him away, not much wiser than before. Next, he’s visited by a doctor who tells him that he’s currently living out a fantasy—that he’s currently tied up in the Recall facility and that he’s not really on Mars, that nothing is really happening. The doctor brings in Lori, who tells him she loves him. The doctor hands him a red pill; he has to take the pill to go back to reality. Quaid threatens the doctor, saying that, if it’s really a fantasy, then he could kill the doctor, right? OMG a red pill! Really!?!

After seeing the doctor sweating, Quaid caps the doctor and spits the pill out on his corpse. Men storm the room and overwhelm Quaid. Lori gets in a few shots on the family jewels—she really likes doing that—before they tie him up and call Richter. Before they can go to work on him, Melina shows up with a machine gun, clearing the room of everyone but Lori, who disarms her and starts a knock-down, drag-out fistfight with Melina. Lori gets the better of her, but Quaid gets the drop on Lori and puts one between her eyes when she starts cooing at him that she loves him.

Melina and Quaid flee. They get back to the bar where first inquired after her and sneak out a hidden tunnel. Richter is close behind. When no-one will tell him where they went, he and his men just start murdering everyone in the restaurant. It’s kind of understandable that Richter’s pissed, I guess. Quaid had just murdered his lover.

Cohaagen (Ronny Cox) orders Richter back and then shuts down the air supply to mutant-town. Melina, Benny, the taxi driver (Mel Johnson Jr.), and Quaid/Hauser retreat further into the catacombs, where they meet up with the rebel underground—and will meet…Quato, one of sci-fi movie’s best inventions ever. Quato is a telepathic conjoined body attached to the torso of the rebel leader George (Marshall Bell). Quato helps Quaid remember that he’d seen an alien hand in the Martian excavations when he was first on Mars. The seance is interrupted by Cohaagen’s tunnel-drilling machines.

George (w/Quato), Quaid, Benny, and Melina flee to an airlock, but Benny betrays them, gunning down George. Quato lives long enough to tell Quaid to shut down the reactors. Benny thanks Quaid for having led Cohaagen’s troops directly to them. It turns out that Hauser had arranged everything so that they could break past Quato’s mental shield and get to the rebel alliance. Quaid doesn’t believe it—but Hauser isn’t him.

After this giant mind-fuck, Melina and Quaid are bound into recall machines, to reprogram Quaid as Hauser and to make Melina a loving, obedient wife. This doesn’t work, as Quaid pulls the machine apart with his giant muscles. The ensuing fight scene is exceedingly bloody. Quaid and Melina flee into the tunnels once again. There, Benny is right behind them with a drilling machine. Quaid picks up a hand model: “Screw you, Benny!” Melina gets hit in the head with a fake, movie rock in what I can only imagine was a completely unintended coincidence.

Benny inadvertently opens a tunnel to the alien Oxygen machine. In the reactor room, Richter and dozens of men attack him, gunning him down mercilessly. The hologram device from a much-earlier scene shows up like Chekhov’s gun. He and Melina toss it back and forth to take care of all of Richter’s troops. The denouement between Richter and Quaid is coming up, though. Another famous scene is the open elevator, where Richter ends up falling to his death while his arms stay in the elevator. “See you at the party, Richter.”

Next up is Cohaagen, who magically appears with a bomb that Quaid manages to throw into an air vent, but it still blows a hole to the Martian surface. Cue people holding onto things while stretched out horizontally. Quaid throws Cohaagen out the hole. Quaid engages the alien reactor. Quaid and Melina are sucked out of the hole. Cohaagen’s face is popping open. The machine starts producing Oxygen quickly enough to save Quaid and Melina, though.

I watched in German.

XxX: Return of Xander Cage (2017) — 5/10

Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) is back, being whatever form of cool people seem to keep coming back to his movies for. At one point, Xander Cage and some other dude are just riding motorcycles across water, which works just fine because there’s some weird ski on the tires, which of course would work. This is proven physics.

The head of the XxX program Jane Marke (Toni Collette) is noteworthy only because of the actress playing her. She gets Xander back into the game. She is accompanied by Becky Clearidge (Nina Dobrev), who is this movie’s version of Q. Honestly, she’s probably one of the better roles in this movie.

Xiang (Donnie Yen) stole something called Pandora’s Box, which is some sort of all-powerful, electronic, hacking device or something. In German, they call it die Buchse der Pandora, which is kind of a phonetic translation? But it translates to “Pandora’s can,” which is definitely a different body part than her box.

Donnie Yen is, as usual, the absolute best thing about this movie. His choreography and filming of it is the best. Super-fast, super-precise. Tony Jaa’s cuts a bit too much.

Anyway, Xiang’s working with Serena Unger (Deepika Padukone), who always dresses in thigh-high, leather boots, even on a sand-filled island camp, which is an oddly terrible fashion choice.

Talon’s (Tony Jaa) quite a little fighter, but I’m not at all surprised by that.

There’s so much green-screening in this movie, it’s kind of sad.

Adele Wolff (Ruby Rose) is dressed exactly like Lara Croft. She is still the angry, powerful lesbian—just like she is in every movie. Tennyson Torch (Rory McCann) is fun to watch—but mostly because I remember him as “The Hound” in Game of Thrones. Also, there is no way that this movie is not taking the piss: Torch throws his mouthguard in just before he charges into a hail of bullets—and is struck only in the shoulder and hindquarters.

They’re also doing some sort of grrrl-action thing here, with Wolff, Serena, and Becky clearing a whole warehouse of bad guys by themselves, with lots of hero-posing and slow-motion gun-twirling. They’re then trapped, with the guys taking up a supporting role—women still in charge. They call out the count to jump back into a deadly fracas—another hail of bullets—when Darius Stone (Ice Cube) appears literally out of nowhere with a grenade launcher to mow down all the remaining baddies. A pure Deus Ex Machina. We’re supposed to remember him from previous movies, I’m guessing.

Meanwhile, Marke gets the drop on Xiang by kneecapping him, but he gets the drop on her by tossing her out of the back of the plane that they’re all going to die in. Xander is meanwhile flying the plane into a de-orbiting satellite. Just before it hits, he jumps out of the back of the plane—but it’s kind of unclear where Xiang went. You almost know he didn’t just die. Also, Xander crashes into Earth on a rapidly decelerating freight package attached to a giant parachute. Holy shit, Xiang is just with the crew when they drive out to meet Xander. WTF!?! They didn’t even bother to show how he got out of the plane! NO PROBLEM.

Round out the reunion with Xander and Darius hugging and chest-thumping and congratulating each other on how the whole world will be searching for them. That doesn’t stop them from all showing up for Augustus Gibbons’s (Samuel L. Jackson) funeral, which is totally fake because he’s attending his own funeral. He’s even got an eyepatch, as if he’s playing his Nick Fury role. Weird: And Xander is sliding into his role as Dominic Turturro

There is literally no way that Alex Restrepo doesn’t watch this movie at least twice per year. Ah, what am I talking about? I’m watching this damned thing, too.

I gave it an extra star because of the self-aware tongue-in-cheek moments and the quality of some of the cast.

I watched it in German.

South Park S26 (2023) — 8/10

They’re still doing a great job, after all of these years. So far, they’ve covered,

• The first episode has Cartman possessed by “Cupid Ye”, who tells him that Jews run Hollywood. Everyone at school believes it and the students start to submit scripts to Kyle.
• An episode about the prince and princess of Canada moving to South Park because they just want some privacy
• An episode about Japanese toilets, which hits home so hard, with it’s absolutely iron-clad logic that everything about how we take shits in the west is pretty topsy-turvy. We shit into drinking water then wipe our asses with perfumed and shredded trees. We used to have bidets, but we got rid of them, in exchange for super-sized plumbing systems that can swallow tons of paper. Big toilet paper is behind it all, of course.
• An episode about ChatGPT, where Clyde and Stan use it to generate generic responses to their girlfriends, so that they don’t have to answer endless text messages manually. More of the boys are caught cheating on their essays—as is Mr. Garrison, who uses ChatGPT to grade them.

• An episode about work ethic, in which Butters gets a job working at an ice-cream shop. He shows up at the basketball court, waving a paycheck. Cartman wants in, so he shows up at the ice-cream shop to start his job. he does nothing.

  He lasts less than four hours, as predicted. He wants to work from home, he’s on the phone, he needs his breaks. He bails and starts a new business idea with Kenny—Dickenbaus Hot Dogs. He goes to Butters for funding. They drain his bank account building Cartman’s hot-dog house into a mini-theme-park, but they can’t get anyone to work at it. Nor are they obviously willing to work themselves.

  Butters shows up, realizes the money is all gone, and starts his second job there, turning it into a success. He gets his money back, and more, then sells immediately to a foreign investor, paying Cartman’s mother to move back into her old house—taking Cartman away from the little paradise that he’d built for himself.

Armageddon (1998) — 9/10

I’m an absolute sucker for this movie, but upon re-viewing, it’s obvious why. It hits all of the beats, it’s an actual movie. The cast is great; it’s one of Bruce Willis’s best movies.

How does it start? A bunch of meteorites strike New York. An amateur astronomer reports to NASA that this is just a foretaste of the giant asteroid that’s on its way to Earth—a planet-killer. He names it after his “hinterhältige Giftschlange” of a wife.

Next, we meet Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), owner and founder of an oil-drilling company and leader of a motley crew that’s the “best in the world”: A.J. (Ben Affleck), Rockhound (Steve Buscemi), Chick (Will Patton), Oscar (Owen Wilson), Bear, (Michael Clarke Duncan), Max (Ken Hudson Campbell). Grace (Liv Tyler) is Harry’s daughter and A.J.‘s lover and she’s a distraction.

They are recruited by Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) and join his crew of Watts (Jessica Steen), General Kimsey (Keith David), Willie Sharp (William Fichtner), and so on. They all train together; they do some montages; there are Aerosmith songs. They fix the equipment; they break some; they go out for one night of fun. They’re ready to go.

Harry says goodbye to Grace and makes her promises, only one of which he will be able to keep. This part is stupid, but I have to mention it because it’s filmed in an absolutely awesome, rusted temple of space-flight. It was definitely filmed there and it was definitely a place that the director of photography saw while scouting the John F. Kennedy Space Center. These things don’t happen anymore because people don’t do that anymore. They would just make some shit up, film it in front of a green screen, and phone that shit in, nice and cheap. We have definitely lost something. We should make an effort to get it back, and look back on these last 10-15 years where literally everything was made digitally dissolve like a bad dream upon waking.

Billy Bob is great, as usual, as is Bruce Willis. They play so well that you literally can’t imagine anyone else playing the role. Affleck is pretty good, but you can easily imagine Matt Damon playing his role. Steve Buscemi does his lines perfectly. Owen Wilson just plays himself, as usual. They’re on their way to Lev Andropov (Peter Stormare), who is an eternal favorite. He plays a Russian on Mir, where the space shuttle docks to refuel. I shit you not.

The shuttle gets refueled, but they have to evacuate in a hurry because there’s a leak in the fuel line. Lev and A.J. almost get left behind in a disintegrating space station, but they both make it out, just in time. Both shuttles escape by the skin of their teeth. On to the asteroid. I’d forgotten there were two of them—but there had to be, so one of them could crash into a giant asteroid fragment and kill nearly everyone on board. The shuttle with A.J. crashes, while the other shuttle “lands”—more or less.

Harry and the crew in the landed shuttle debark and get to work. There are a dozen things worse than they’d imagined. They persevere.

Bear, A.J., and Lev are alive and they break out of the crashed shuttle with the armadillo and head toward a green blip on their radar, hoping for the best.

Drilling is going terribly. Colonel Sharpe and Harry get into each other’s hair—the secondary protocol is to just blow up the bomb on the surface of the asteroid. This will, of course, have no effect whatsoever, but military’s gonna military, ammirite? Billy Bob demands that Keith David refuse the order and damned if that’s not good cinema.

The bomb starts blinking; it’s been triggered. There’s a huge scuffle; guns are drawn; words are said; friendships are made; bombs are defused.

A huge asteroid-quake blows the fissure they’re working and sends Max into outer space with their only working Armadillo. However, Lev, A.J., and Bear had figured out how to fly with their Armadillo and they’ve navigated around half the asteroid and show up just in time to finish digging the hole. They reach their depth, but more and more of the asteroid starts raining down on them as Earth’s gravity starts pulling it apart.

The bomb is damaged—it will no longer auto-trigger, so someone has to babysit it; a red-shirt dies. They retreat into the ship to pull straws to see who’s going to sacrifice themselves. Lev volunteers because he doesn’t want to return to the planet as a Russian coward. Rockhound also volunteers because (A) he’s crazy from being in space and (B) he knows that he has some very inadvisable debts waiting for him back on Earth.

A.J. draws the short straw. Harry takes him to the asteroid surface, but blows his air on him and takes his place. There is a fuckload of melodrama. Harry prepares the bomb while the others prepare for takeoff. The shuttle won’t fire. Lev asks Watts to step aside and put away the manual. He beats the everloving Christ out of the engine with a giant wrench. It fires.

The shuttle takes off; the bomb doesn’t fire. Sharp wants to turn around. Harry’s crew believes in him. Harry falls down a hole. He climbs out. He blows the asteroid with a few seconds to spare. The Earth is saved. Statues of Harry Stamper will be built all over the world.

The shuttle is somehow still whole and ready to reenter the atmosphere. There’s a whole montage about people being grateful. Bullshit. People would forget nearly immediately and just go back to being assholes to each other. Any spirit of cooperation would be soon replaced with the same old empirical aspirations and stupidity.

Anyway, the shuttle lands and Grace is out on the tarmac in a dress rather than the fire-safety equipment everyone else is wearing. More melodrama, but fine.

I saw it in German this time.

Mad Max (1979) — 7/10

This is the original film that started it all, following Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), as he hunts psychos across the Australian Outback. He’s a police officer, and the world is more gone than it was at the time, but not so far gone that he doesn’t have a wife, child, and home to return to after his multi-day shifts. Spoiler: this movie is a lot more normal than I’d remembered.

We join him as he takes down a certain Nightrider (Vince Gil), who seems utterly whacked out and devil-may-care. He and his girlfriend die in pretty much a self-inflicted fiery cataclysm. This doesn’t prevent his crew from seeking vengeance, though. The crew is a motorcycle gang that shows up in town, led by the unusually named Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne).

They hunt down a young couple (M/F), raping them both and destroying their car utterly. The one guy the cops manage to catch is let go for lack of evidence to convict him of anything. This is a shame because you should be able to at least get time for extremely poor fashion choices or shockingly poor impulse control.

TIL “the bronze” means “the police”.

Max’s partner Jim Goose (Steve Bisley) is absolutely pissed that they had to let Johnny the Boy (Tim Burns) go and he swears he’ll find him out on the road. Johnny and Toecutter find Jim first. Jim flies off of his bike because of a trap, but recovers. As he’s driving back with the tow truck, with his bike in the back, Johnny throws a brake drum through his windshield—with utterly preternatural precision—sending him off the road in what is his second big vehicular accident of the day. Upside-down and covered in leaking gasoline, Goose … well, his goose is cooked. Johnny argues with Toecutter about whether they’re really going to do it, but do it they do.

Max finds Goose in the hospital, under a tent, burned to a crisp. He storms off, claiming that that’s not Goose. It is, though, though not for long.

After a shitty, sleepless night, Max goes to his commanding officer Fifi (Roger Ward) to quit. Fifi looks kind of like the guy who Indiana Jones fought at the airplane in his first outing.

Max is now on the road with his wife Jessie (Joanne Samuel) and child Sproggo (Brendan Heath) and dog, dressed like a chump in nice pants and shirt. When they get a flat tire, he stays at the garage to help, while his wife takes their child “Sproggo” for an ice cream. To no-one’s surprise at all, Toecutter and his gang happen to be there. Tocutter gets some of her ice cream, but she knees him in the balls and hightails it out of there. She stops to pick up Max. They leave the tire.

They end up at the coast, visiting friends. Life is idyllic, for a while. Jessie heads down to the beach with the dog and spends a lovely, sleepy few hours there. On the way back through the woods, Toecutter’s gang is back to terrorize her. She makes it back home, into Max’s arms. He heads into the woods, armed with a shotgun and dressed in his white A-Frame shirt and beige khakis—which he was wearing while repairing the car.

After she calms down, Jessie remembers that she has no idea where her child is. Luckily, Toecutter and his gang found the boy and they’re all posted up on the farm where Max and Jessie are staying, all without anyone noticing. May shows up with a shotgun and herds the gang into the barn, while she, Jessie, and Sprog take off. There are just so many unexpected escapes for Jessie and Sprog.

I suppose I should interject at this point that this isn’t at all how I remembered this movie. I don’t think anyone really remembers this one. I think we all remember Mad Max 2 and Beyond the Thunderdome much more.

Jessie’s car dies. May sends her packing and tries to stand down the gang, but they blaze right by her. They run Jessie and Sprog down. A shoe and toy ball bounce across the road. Max appears, running to the white pile of clothing that used to be his wife and child.

They get her to a hospital, but she’s a mess. They stabilize her, but she’s not out of the woods. No-one mentions the child.

Max flips his wig a little, quite rightly. He gets out his old police uniform and collects the 600HP vehicle he’d never gotten a chance to drive.

He’s on the hunt now, driving down the gang and taunting them into giving chase. He blasts through them like bowling pins. Max drives into a prohibited area, seeing a person lying in the long grass next to a motorcycle. It’s a trap, of course. Toectutter or Bubba (Geoff Parry) shoots out his knee, then runs over his hand. Max gets control of his shotgun and takes out Bubba, but Johnny and Toecutter get away. Max gives chase in his hyper-vehicle.

He’s lost some blood.

…but not as much as Toecutter does when he drives head-first into a tractor-trailer truck.

After that, Max drives around a bunch until he manages to find Johnny, who’s taken out another victim. He’s stealing his boots. Max makes him cuff his own ankle, then hooks the other end to a truck axle. He gives him a hacksaw: it takes ten minutes to saw through the axle, but only five to saw through an ankle. The truck’s going to blow up long before then, anyway.

BOOM.

The end.