Director: George Miller
Writer: James McCausland, George Miller, Byron Kennedy
Stars: Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne
Synopsis: In a self-destructing world, a vengeful Australian policeman sets out to stop a violent motorcycle gang.
It’s October 2023, and my friends and I decide to go see a Mad Max marathon playing at a local theater starting at 10PM and going till around 6AM the next morning, with breaks in the middle of each movie. It is a night we remember fondly to this day, particularly in terms of how it completely ruptured our sleep schedules for a long while after, but it doesn’t change the wonderful night that preceded our insomnia, or the fresh coffee and breakfast we got at a cafe only minutes after they had opened for the day. Sitting in a 100-year-old theater surrounded by several dozen people, some even dressed as characters from the movies, and watching each movie play on the gigantic canvas in front of us, was an unforgettable experience.
Ever since its inception in 1979, the Mad Max series has become a pioneering force in action cinema, with incredible chase sequences and vehicular carnage showcased with incredible direction from the mastermind of the franchise, George Miller. While the series may have reached its zenith in 2015 with Mad Max: Fury Road, and its prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga; the first movie remains an interesting look into how the world began to lose its way and turn into the Wasteland audiences will come to recognize it as. Shot on a rather shoestring budget of $350,000 in Melbourne over six weeks, the first Mad Max tells the story of Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), a police officer in the Main Force Patrol (MFP) trying to keep law and order in place as war and chaos have overtaken everything and led to criminals on the streets committing more heinous crimes and causing more reckless damage and stealing commodities like fuel, eventually clashing with a motorcycle gang run by Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne).
46 years since its release, it’s interesting to revisit Mad Max, especially as the scale of the franchise has radically transformed, while also appreciating its standalone nature within the series. Each movie feels like its own separate tale as Max moves through the wasteland and society crumbles further, though it is fascinating seeing the ideas chronicled in The Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road be introduced here, such as the importance of fuel as more and more of the environment is pillaged and reduced to ruins, with machines and vehicles creating a religion of their own. Tying in Max’s V8 Pursuit Special to an almost holistic version of V8 by the time Fury Road happens is a particularly fun detail, as well as the inclusion of Keays-Byrne, who appears later as Immortan Joe in Fury Road.
As Max, Gibson is cast well, not quite the version of the character he eventually becomes, but teetering on the edge of it more often than not, though still reserving a chunk of his sanity and rational thinking for his wife, Jessie (Joanne Samuel), and son, “Sprog” (Brendan Heath). This is tested, however, by Toecutter, whose gang also wants to eradicate the police officers after them like Max and his partner “Goose” (Steve Bisley). Keays-Byrne plays Toecutter in menacing fashion, expressing his disdain for everything through his extreme actions such as eventually killing Goose by having his gang burn him alive and run down Jessie and “Sprog,” acts which eventually make Max lose his moral compass and hunt down the gang in more lethal ways. As entertaining as it is to see Max go after everyone who has wronged him, it also comes with a sense of tragedy and sadness over seeing someone like him losing his sense of humanity, which leads to his change in later movies. The action that ensues is brutal, often more grounded in nature than its future installments, and loaded with the hyperactive editing unique to the franchise, making for an effective visual spectacle.
While Mad Max may not be the best movie from George Miller, given his work in The Road Warrior, Fury Road and Furiosa, it serves as an incredibly effective entry into the world of fire and blood Max sees on a daily basis, a world past the brink of almost all sensitivities and emotion and one built almost solely on people watching everything burn while having a smile on their face. Cynical and dark in its approach, but more tragic in its aftermath, showing the audience a man who embraces being the man he is nicknamed to be at the MFP: Mad.
