Mad Max Review

        New year and new films to talk about. In case you haven’t been following the format for January, I’ve been reviewing movie franchises. Some I talked about are classics and just garbage fires with how varying the quality of the films were or just getting progressively worse. I decided to talk about a good franchise for once. So it made sense to talk about the Mad Max series. I’ve only ever watched Fury Road and the spin off is coming out later this year. With all that, here’s what I think about the first Mad Max.

1. Max Rockatansky

        I feel that watching Fury Road first way back in my college years warped my expectations for the first entry. With how just bonkers and thought provoking the recent entry was, I had set the bar really high. Of course, for the first entry is extremely tame, considering what came after with its sequels. It’s not a detriment of the film, far from it. More so that I’ve only seen snippets without any context or where the character is story wise. 

        As the movie starts, we’re dropped into a dystopian version of Australia where oil is nearly gone. If there’s one tidbit where I at least appreciate for the movie’s sake is that it never tells the audience what year it takes place in. Sometimes the variation of the phrase “In the not-too-distant future…” works since it makes the scenario and the situation more believable without it being an inevitable punchline when the year passes by. 

        We see that all hell is broken loose as a biker gang led by the Nightrider terrorizes the road and the pitstop towns. The police force is severely undermanned but is led by Max. Considered the best cop in the force, his life is turned upside down when the bikers take everything from him. When I say or type that, I mean that they kill his partner and family. In one way, the plot is very simple where you know what’s going on. 

        For being just an hour and 30 minutes, it didn’t drag in the least bit. Some people might be turned off that there isn’t much in terms of action. To me, it’s like a combination of a biker movie of the past, a western and a vigilante film of the 70s. Well, it did come out during the late 70s, but I don’t consider it exploitive since there aren’t any gruesome deaths. There are but editing makes more impactful I think. 

        As far as action is concerned, I really like how close it feels. Like when the bikers attack a civilian, some of the camera angles are inside of the car to put us in the literal passenger seat. The driving or chase scenes aren’t entirely drawn out when we follow Max. Director George Miller expertly uses the editing to make the sudden impact of the biker’s colliding with a vehicle or attacking a victim more heightened. The best moment is when Max is chasing the biker leader and we see the quick cuts to the villain’s eyes bulge out before colliding with a truck. Utter brilliance for a film made less than half a million. 

        So let’s talk about the character before he went Mad. Max is an interesting character since he doesn’t start off as deranged or slowly losing his sanity. He’s mostly the straight man in a world that has gone to hell. The moments when we see him with his partners and family show that he has integrity. More so that it complements the world. What I saw is that everyone still lives in a normal world, albeit one where any sense of normalcy is all but non-existent. It’s like Max is trying to live a regular life but not taking into consideration that it can be taken away. 

        World wise, it’s very tame since most the film takes place within the countryside of Australia. I think what enhances it is that it’s nearly empty with no other cars driving. Compounding it is that we don’t even see any abandoned cars or any sense of life. It’s almost eerie with how the bikers can come out of nowhere or just accelerate to a point where it can catch up to a victim. I like how the vegetation is mostly something out in a desert land. I think to communicate that it’s slowly dying and I think also to represent how Max has fallen.

2. Legacy

        For a feature debut, I was surprised that for a while it was the highest grossing independent film to be released. I can understand that the action and the character that Mel Gibson played made people care and want to watch. Nobody I believe would ever think that there would be follow ups and show the more horrific side of an apocalyptic Australia. Or just the country by itself, apocalyptic notwithstanding. 

        It says a lot that the film spawned multiple franchises in terms of both film and in video games. I would never put it together that the final moments in the film could influence director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannel to create Saw. And even that has its own franchise that is still going. For one, it’s rare to have one scene be influential. Especially one where we see a hero slowly becoming part of his environment by being an unfeeling force of judgement. 

3. Overall 

        Mad Max is one of the best director debuts for George Miller. There’s three more to go but this is certainly the one where the franchise becomes beloved.