Set in the near future, Mad Max portrays a dystopia on the brink of total collapse. Biker gangs do as they please and the “Halls of Justice” are quite literally crumbling. Yet, small pockets of a peaceful society still exist. People still go to restaurants and nightclubs and an attempt at order, of a sort, is maintained by the Main Force Patrol (MFP), though the line between good and bad is slowly beginning to blur. Working with a tiny budget, director and co-writer George Miller uses the open road as his visual effect, bringing the action as close to the asphalt as we can get. Tires screech and eyes bug out of their head as a story of a society on the verge of being overrun by savages evolves into a story of revenge as the film’s title character slowly earns his nickname.
With a mixture of chaos, soon-to-be memorable moments of iconography and comedy, Miller sets the stage with a chase on the aptly named Anarchie Road. A criminal by the name of the Nightrider (Vincent Gil) has escaped from police custody and is on the run with his girlfriend. As pursuers are steadily left in the fleeing convict’s dust it’s Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) that eventually delivers a kind of justice that’s become increasingly frequent, which is a chase that ends in the Nightrider engulfed in a massive ball of flames.
A biker gang known as the Acolytes, led by Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and his mascara’d right hand man Bubba Zanetti (Geoff Parry), set their sights on revenge for Nightrider’s death. MFP Captain Fifi (Roger Ward) puts out the order, “So long as the paperwork’s clean, you boys can do what you like out there,” and as the chaos mounts, Max begins to doubt whether he still wants to be a part of it, especially with a wife (Joanne Samuel) and young son at home. However, his world is about to be shattered into a million pieces, leaving nothing but vengeance in his heart and its Max’s psychological transformation that is the most compelling aspect of this story.
Miller does what he can with his small budget, up to and including, using a painted piece of wood as a false front on a semi truck so as not to destroy the actual vehicle he was given for the shoot. Stunt cyclists worked nearly for free, one even catching a motorcycle to the head in a slow-motion sequence that is easy enough to see while watching. Match these moments with camerawork that puts the viewer in on the action and you’ve created a compelling feature despite the limited resources.
The performances aren’t necessarily anything to brag about, but I can’t say I expected much. This was only Gibson’s second role and he attended the audition as Steve Bisley‘s friend, with no intention of landing a role himself. Bisley eventually landed the role as Max’s partner, Goose, while Gibson’s career found its start in what is now affectionately considered a member of the ’70s and ’80s Ozploitation films. However, exploitation or not, it’s the intensity and pace with which Miller tells the story that keeps us engaged.
By the end of the film Gibson’s performance as Max is deathly dark as he’s driven to commit acts you’re positive the man he was at the beginning of the film would have never considered and Gibson pulls it off with a believably, emotionless glare. I also loved Robert Ward as Captain Fifi, particularly the moment he attempts to talk Max into staying on the force while he stands there shirtless, his hulking chest hardly covered by a black ascot, all while holding a small watering pot.
The villains are, more-or-less, all straightforward and stereotypical bad guys, though Keys-Byrne (who stars once again as the villainous Immortan Joe in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road), Parry and Tim Burns as Johnny the Boy all own their respective villainous roles, each standing out in their own right. They may be cliched and more than a bit campy, but they, at the very least, don’t hold back.
Often considered the second best film in the original Mad Max trilogy to Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, I actually find Miller’s directorial debut more compelling on a character level than its successor. There’s no doubt by the time Road Warrior rolled around Miller was playing in a bigger sandbox and the action sequences really began to sing, but there’s something about the intimacy this film has with the blurring road beneath its wheels and the cold finale that really, really works for me.
This is a dark film to be sure and it’s a dated film that many modern audiences will find slow, but if you allow yourself enough time with these characters by the time Max hands Johnny the Boy a hacksaw and drives away I have to believe your heart will be just as hardened as Max’s and the fireball the follows will allow for more than just a little cold-hearted satisfaction.
