- Directed by George Miller
- Written by James McCausland and George Miller
- Starring
- Mel Gibson
- Joanne Samuel
- Hugh Keays-Byrne
- Steve Bisley
- Tim Burns
If you wanted to, you could blame a lot on Mad Max. In the broad sense, you could blame it for giving a major boost to the “mindless violence” school of filmmaking that’s become thick on the ground these days. You could be more specific and trace from it (through its sequel, The Road Warrior) the entire lineage of Italian post-apocalyptic thrillers that still clog VHS rental racks to this days. If you wanted to be really petty, you could posit that Mel Gibson’s entire career hangs on his first starring role here, and thus the entire chain of events that brought The Patriot to the screen can be laid at George Miller’s feet.
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Hey, didya hear that Australia was originally populated by criminals? |
Pretty heavy load to bear for a movie simply about shit happening ‘n’ stuff.
Despite the fact that the Mad Max trilogy is closely associated with the post-apocalyptic genre, this first movie is not a post-apocalyptic movie — i.e., it does not take place after some nuclear, biological, or environmental disaster has dealt a fatal blow to Life As We Know It, forcing everyone to live in ramshackle hovels while wearing studded shoulderpads. No, the world of Mad Max is Australia of a posited near future, where anarchy is in the middle of its slow march instead of falling suddenly on the world. And the arid, empty landscape that forms the backdrop? Shucks, that’s just what Australia looks like.
Anarchy in this case is best represented by the “terminally psychotic” automotive marauders who terrorize the… um… the mostly empty and unpopulated rural roads far from population centers. (Jeez, if these guys have been shunted to the hinterlands, you gotta wonder how mean the thugs are who’ve staked out the prime urban terrorizing territories.) Our first representative example calls himself Nightrider (Vince Gil — no, not that one), a hairy and smelly-looking freak who joyrides all over the countryside after a copkilling binge the night before that would have been far too expensive to film. The police, such as they are, aren’t very effective against him; there are, after all, only six of them in the entire department. They’re also pretty much joyriders themselves, more intent on the thrill of the chase than keeping the peace. And chief among them is the black “Mad” Max Rockatansky (Gibson).
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“This is the LAST time you pull this ‘Krazy Glue on the forehead’ stunt.” |
Not that he’s the joyrideriest of them; that distinction would go to his pal Goose (Steve Bisley), who treats the whole job like the greatest game of tag ever. No, Max has a serious edge to him; he takes Nightrider down (after one of the greatest car chases ever set to film) simply by calmly playing chicken, and playing to win.
Let’s get back to that car chase for a moment, shall we? It’s really saying something that, after all the increasingly-elaborate vehicular pursuits of the last few decades, this one still manages to grab some attention. Its appeal, ironically, relies on the fact that George Miller didn’t have millions of dollars of Hollywood Bucks to design new and novel chase scenes. (”Hey, let’s have a hovercraft, a tank, AND an aircraft carrier!”) Instead, he simply has cars slamming into each other at high velocity, with the attendant destruction ensuing. (Watch a compact van gets crushed like a beer can and spun off the road; that’s one of the images you’ll definitely carry away from the movie.) There’s an honest weight of impact here that spark-showered slo-mo collisions can’t touch.
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Suddenly, your own boss doesn’t seem so bad. |
Anyway. With Nightrider dead, Max and his buds immediately think about possible ramifications, such as any friends he may have had. And that’s a solid concern, because Nightrider’s main friend seems to have been Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne), a huge skunk-haired psychopath, and his band of standard-issue “colorful” motorcycle-riding goons. True to form, they get their jollies from terrorizing and torturing bystanders, as well as planning revenge for “one of their own” by going after the smaller fry first and working their way up to Max.
Which, honestly, might be where I leave the plot synopsis. For one thing, the events as they occur from here on out are so typical as to be almost generic: they capture a gang member, he goes free because none of the civilians will testify against him (taunting the cops as his lawyer springs him), Goose gets ambushed and burnt to a barely-living crisp, Toecutter demonstrates repeatedly to his admiring followers just what an insane sumbitch he is… It practically writes itself, to tell the truth.
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What IS it with these guys and their tongues? |
In fact, one of the subplots that helps this movie stand out is disappointingly underplayed. Max is a family man, with a lovely sax-playing wife (Joanne Samuel) and a toddler son whom they have cruelly named Sprong (Brendan Heath), and with them he’s a devoted everyman. But when he’s out on the road, he can feel the gap between himself and the crazies he hunts getting narrower every day — a tendency reinforced by his commanding officer, “Fifi” Macafee (Roger Ward), who is trying to play Max as a larger-than-life hero figure to win back public support and confidence. It’s a terrific idea; too bad it’s only mentioned in a couple of scenes, and shown to have an impact on Max’s life in none of them. It ends up being less than a subplot, barely above the level of hazy subtext. (And yes, I fully expect a flood of angry emails for daring to comment negatively on a beloved cult movie icon. Sorry, folks, I gotta call ‘em as I see ‘em.)
Looking back at Mad Max twenty-odd years later (and boy, what odd years they’ve been! <rimshot>), I have to wonder how well the movie will continue to age. Not because of the usual timestamping culprits of fashion and music, but simply because of pacing. Aside from the chase scenes, of which there really aren’t that many, the movie has the pace and feel of a drama, not an action movie. Whole sections are given over to softer, more introspective scenes with Max and his family which bring the action to a dead halt. (Word on the street is that Miller ran out of money for stunt scenes, and had to fill in the time with character stuff. Just think — a few thousand dollars more, and we wouldn’t have to sit through the scene in which Max explains in depth how much he really, really liked his father’s boots.) In fact, once Max takes a vacation with his family to sort out his career future, it’s pure chance that brings them back into the sights of Toecutter’s gang — and that only when Jessie randomly manages to catch Toecutter’s eye and rouse his ire, independent of the beef he’s got against Max. (Pat yourself on the head if you guessed that she managed to knee him in the nuts. Like I said, these things practically write themselves.)
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Use the Force, Max! |
Despite the flaws, Miller had the good sense to end the movie with a scene fully as memorable as the initial chase, though in a different way, as the now revenge-driven Max tracks the last of his targets, handcuffs him to a crashed car leaking gas, and tosses him a hacksaw with which he can escape — if he’s willing to saw through his own limb. It’s a terrific situation which fulfills the needs of vengeance without crossing the line into unredeemable brutality. I guess in the end, we’ve got some distinctly good scenes, and no distinctly bad ones; if that’s the criteria for a classic, then so be it.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 7, plus 1 dog
- breasts: 0 (or 2, if you’ve got a good enough zoom feature on your DVD player to pick ‘em out)
- explosions: 2
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
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