Mad Max (1979)

Drives to the supermarket just got a whole lot more intense.

In a savage, post-apocalyptic land, Officer Max Rockatansky (Gibson) is the law and runs it his way; whether people like it or not, is strictly their problems. Things got real hot and heavy, however, when a group of nomadic bikers led by the deranged Toecutter (Keays-Byrne) murder his friend and attack his family, forcing Max to unleash revenge the only way he knows best.

You got to hand it to director George Miller because this guy took a budget of only $400,000, used that cash to bring out some sick-ass looking cars, fashion statements, and guns, only to end up grossing nearly over $100,000,000 worldwide and influencing every piece of pop-culture from Saw to Chris Jericho. Yeah, this guy’s got a lot on his plate in terms of love and respect and with good reason, because this film still hits as hard now as it did back in 1979.

What’s solid about Miller’s direction is what he does with these car/bike chases. Nowadays we see onslaughts of CGI and special effects tamper with the image of what an automobile accident should look like, so it’s pretty refreshing to see a guy use not one piece of that and get some of the craziest, most realistic-looking accidents ever filmed. There’s a type of kinetic style and energy that Miller brings to this material that makes all of the action scenes that much more amped-up and intense than they probably already are, and it makes the crashes look even better, especially when in the first ten minutes you see one blow up into little, tiny pieces.

Max isn’t mad? He’s happy and romantic?!? Ew!

And when you have a movie where hardly any character drives below 65 mph, then you definitely need to make sure things are moving no matter what.

The way Miller uses the dead center of the Australian desert works too, in that it makes it seem like this flick is taking place in a Western town, where everything just went to shit because of some terrible apocalyptic happening. There’s not a lot of effort and money put into the set designs, but when you have gangs that dress like Judas Priest, sexy-ass cars that you can literally hear and smell a mile away, and have dudes who don’t shave but always look bad-ass, you don’t need to because you’re already set in creating a pretty screwed up and weird place to begin with. Just goes to show you that what you can do with little or no money at all and still make it look like hell on Earth.

Well, hell on Earth with a lot of gasoline and leather.

But despite all of this slick and cool style that Miller gives off, his story seems to falter. There’s nothing really flashy with this story that hasn’t already been done before but what bothered me is where it ends up going. The first act and the last act are both filled with insane amounts of cool action that keeps the flick moving at a brisk, fun pace, but then there was this middle act that just seemed to meander along without anything happening. What’s even worse is we get one of those sappy, happy montages that almost changes the whole mood of the film completely. Maybe Miller wanted to save up on all of his action and violence for the end (you know, for money purposes), but he could have really given me something better in the meantime to hold one’s interest.

How I like to drive. Especially during rush hour.

Let me also not forget to mention that since this is in fact, a straight-up B-movie, there are the usual tendencies that all B-movies seem to go through. Some moments here are so freakin’ campy that it almost feels like the film is doing a self-parody on itself. One sequence in particular was when Max stumbles upon his partner in a hospital bed, being burnt to a crisp. For some reason, Miller thought that this scene needed that extra “oomph” to really gain our attention, so he adds a terribly loud and dramatic score that seems like it came right out of a Hitchcock movie. That wouldn’t have seemed so bad had Miller gone for that type of movie, but for the most part, it doesn’t seem like he is, so of course, some of this plays off as a bit more ridiculous than it probably intended on being.

However, at the center of it all is Mel Gibson; somebody who, despite all of the controversy surrounding his name, is incredibly talented in proving himself to be a total and absolute bad-ass. This isn’t something people knew about him back in the day, but his big-screen debut in Mad Max changed that and it’s no surprise. Max, the character, goes through a whole range of emotions that change up throughout the whole flick and it’s Gibson’s charisma and energy that he puts into this role that really makes it stand out. Sometimes this character can go into the usual conventions, but Gibson just about rises above that and makes this character cool, violent, and also one scary person you do not want to piss off. Gibson’s career as of late seems to be going in and out, but regardless of what happens next for him, we’ll always have this gem of his to remind us of the young up-and-comer that he once was.

That is, before he started drinking and telling cops how he exactly felt about them.

Consensus: Certain cracks here and there in the narrative, but overall, Mad Max still works as a solid, low-budget, B-movie that also has the novelty of featuring a very young, but very compelling Mel Gibson in the titled-role.

8 / 10

Big yellow taxis ain’t got nothin’ on Max.

Photos Courtesy of: Movpins