Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, dyin' time's here." With that genial salutation, the hunchbacked emcee greets a braying mob assembled for the evening's entertainment at Thunderdome. Welcome to a death duel between that stoic wanderer of the postapocalypse Australian wasteland, Mel Gibson's Mad Max, and his monstrous iron-masked opponent, known as Blaster. You are privileged to witness, as well, an astonishing display of virtuoso cinema that is destined to take its place among the most vivid and freshly imagined fist-to-groin contests in the medium's history.
The dome itself is of the geodesic variety, an open latticework of metal bars on...