The Legendary Mad Max

• Directed by George Miller
• April 12, 1979 (Australia)

In a dystopian near-future, Australia that is facing a breakdown of civil order with violence and madness ruling the land.

I admit to being far from thrilled with Mad Max when I first saw it. It just did not connect with me. I’m not sure what exactly it was. Perhaps because I saw it on television first and not in theaters as it is meant to be seen. It was decades before I saw it as one might see in the cinemas.

My view of the film is significantly improved now because of viewing it without commercials and unedited. It’s a visceral action experience that I now know is harmed by the breaks required for network television viewing. While I still don’t think it’s the best of the Mad Max bunch, it is certainly a much better movie than I originally felt.

This film is a stripped down, bare-bones action film about a man in a rough future pushed to his breaking point by the madness that surrounds him. What causes things to be this way is never explained, nor is it necessary for the purposes of the film. We just know things are bad. Civilization is hanging on by a thread with a much more brutal way of life taking hold.

Action films with impressive stunts came along before this and have continued long after it but part of what makes this so special is that they were done so well here. It’s intense and exciting and all choreographed so well and assembled perfectly.

In contrast to later films in the series, the costuming is not weird. The clothing worn by characters looks used but are not codpieces and shoulder pads and random items used as armor or for intimidation. In fact the whole world as presented is worn and weathered. Without saying so they let you know that resources are thin and order is mostly an illusion.

This is a series of films known for its vehicles. What we get is relatively tame in comparison to later entries. Then again what we get here in the story happens in relative civilization. The Interceptor we get in the opener is cool, but the real vehicular star is the all black Pursuit Special which is not only cool but denotes a character transformation in Max.

A main indication of how far society has fallen are the police officers we meet. Relatively speaking as initially presented Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) is idealistic in comparison to his colleagues. If it wasn’t for the badges that they wore, you would be hard-pressed to understand that those he worked with were the cops in Mad Max. And that’s the point. The Main Force Patrol (MFP) seems to have taken whoever they can get to maintain whatever level of order possible with the available resources. The delineation between good and bad is indeed who gets to wear a badge.

In a conversation with Fred “Fifi” Macaffee (Roger Ward), his MFP captain, Max admits to liking the brutality he must engage in too much and fears he is becoming just like those on the other side of the law. Gibson turned in an amazing performance that helped elevate something that would otherwise be good but not necessarily spawn a series helmed by a particular character. Gibson made him a human.

Special shoutout goes to Hugh Keays-Byrne as gang leader and main villain Toecutter. While not a huge name, he was such a fantastic actor. I can’t say I’ve seen him in too much but here as in some of the other stuff I’ve seen him he inhabited the role. He brought the character to life as if a film crew were allowed to watch as it happened and not just watched somebody play a part. Par for the course with Keays-Byrne.

And Toecutter was a truly frightening character. He was not someone you would want to meet. He was cruel and cold, bordering on amoral. Keays-Byrne came on the screen and made him somebody to be feared before he actually did something to show you why he was to be feared.

The world of Mad Max dictates how the characters react. Since this world has no humanity then often neither do they. The mechanic. The doctors. Every member of the police force. And Max to a certain extent who eventually loses all of his as well. In the final moments of the film after hunting down and dealing with Toecutter’s gang, he handcuffs the last member of the gang to a car he sets up to explode and after dropping a hacksaw on the ground ssays “The chain in those handcuffs is high-tensile steel. It’d take you ten minutes to hack through it with this. Now, if you’re lucky, you could hack through your ankle in five minutes. Go” and limps off. He crossed that line he did not want to cross.

George Miller established himself as a director of unique vision with this movie. This is a dystopian future with a realism to the insanity presented. Characters get injured when involved in serious things. Nobody’s gonna put a few bandages on and make it through. That is something definitely unique in film.

While not my personal favorite of the bunch, Mad Max is a very good start to a unique and since its inception often copied film universe. It has action and madness and is unlike anything that preceded it and in many ways anything that followed since. Not only is it a classic, but it is a classic everyone should see!