I’m an Australian, and as an Australian there are some things that are just considered part of the culture. We all love a meat pie with sauce. We were all devastated by the passing of Steve Irwin. We all know that “oi yeah nah” and “oi nah yeah” mean completely different things. And finally, for Australians, the film Mad Max is basically mandated viewing.
Mad Max, directed by George Miller and released in 1979, is set in a post-apocalyptic future version of Australia (that essentially just looks like how Australia always looks anyway). The film can best be described like this: people in leather drive around for ninety minutes. It’s a simple plot, but it’s a good ‘un.
The titular Max (Mel Gibson) is essentially a vigilante, and he’s not “Mad”… yet. Right now Max is just Max, a member of the highway patrol group known as the Main Force Patrol (MFP). Max has a wife, Jessie (Joanne Samuel), and a baby, Sprog (Brendan Heath), and when he’s not chasing down bad guys on the highway, he’s spending his time going on nice little family vacations with them.
There’s more to the story than that, though. Those bad guys Max is chasing? They’re Toecutter’s gang, and their whole deal is leather, motorbikes and being just generally awful. They terrorise people across the land, and unfortunately some of those people they are trying to terrorize are Max’s friends and family. That’s why Max ends up on holiday – he is so disillusioned by all of the violence he has seen that he needs to get away from it all before he just can’t take it anymore. Bad luck for him, though – Toecutter and his gang are not going to leave Max alone to have a good time.
One big problem with the plot of Mad Max is that it can be a bit hard to understand on a first viewing. For starters, there is no exposition as to why the world is the way it is now – the film just starts, and you just have to accept that something has happened. It’s also not made very clear what exactly Max’s job is – it’s clear that he’s some sort of vigilante, but it’s not completely clear that he works for the MFP, nor what the MFP is. Finally, Toecutter’s gang don’t seem to have any real motives for being evil, other than for the sake of it. They just kind of go from scene to scene causing trouble, up to the point where they cause so much of it that Max finally gets that title of “Mad” in front of his name.
It’s a bit of a shame that the story of Mad Max is not clearer, as it has the makings of an interesting world that Miller just needed to push a bit further. Why is civilization so scattered? Why are people free to take to the streets to terrorize others? Thankfully everything is expanded upon heaps in the sequels The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome, but in this first instalment the world of Mad Max is like vanilla ice cream – sure, it tastes alright on its own, but it has more potential for greatness if combined with other, more interesting toppings.
Another problem with Mad Max is the acting. In most cases it’s just not very good. The majority of the performances range from just passable to downright unwatchable, but the worst offender is probably Gibson as Max. He just comes across as boring in this film, which is a shame, because Max is fundamentally a very cool character – thankfully this is also something that improved with later instalments. Something a bit odd to note about Mad Max is that even though it’s an English-language film, it was redubbed for with American voice actors because there were concerns that Americans wouldn’t understand the Australian slang (some of the original Australian slang is so old that even I don’t understand it – what the hell does “very toey” mean?).
One thing that is excellent, and thankfully so as it’s the whole conceit of the film, really, is the car stunts. An interesting fact about Mad Max is that Miller did not have permits to close the roads to film, so just had to kind of film as much as possible before the cops showed up. Eventually, though, the police took such an interest in the film that they helped him by keeping roads closed and escorting vehicles. To me that sounds like such a typical Australian thing – they probably could have just shut the whole thing down until Miller got permits, but instead they just decided to help out because they thought what he was doing was cool. And the car stunts are cool. Really cool. I feel like it’s a cliché to use the phrase “high octane” when talking about car stunts, but honestly, that’s the best way to describe these. They don’t feel like glossy Hollywood movie stunts, they feel raw and real, and are filmed in a way that shows that, even in his debut feature, Miller knows what makes a good action flick. Techniques like quick cuts, sped-up footage and insert shots of driver’s eyes bulging wide before they crash make these car stunts seem even more dramatic. Max may have his name in the title, but it’s the car stunts that are the real star of the show.
All-in-all, Mad Max is a fine enough film that I definitely recommend watching (and I’m not just saying that because my Australian-ness compels me to), but everything it does is improved upon exponentially in The Road Warrior. This first film is certainly a great jumping-off point, but the high point of the series is yet to arrive.
BEST BITS
- The opening sequence is really exciting.
- I’d do anything to get my hands on a Pursuit Special.
WORST BITS
- Some of the characters just have no introduction or explanation.
- Some of the events just have no introduction or explanation.
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
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