Mad Max
The chronicles of the history of the modern day action movie is a bit of a jagged one, going at least as far back to when French Connection won Best Picture in the early 70s with the help of a fantastic chase sequence and Gene Hackman as a hardboiled antihero cop. Various “road” movies during the decade continued to exploit the virtues of automotive mayhem, but the quantum leap forward in the concept would wind up coming from all places, Australia, when a fledgling director named George Miller and a future worldwide superstar named Mel Gibson would team up to put out this instant classic in 1979, a movie that not only caught the eye of everyone who saw it during its initial limited run, but helped put the entire country’s film industry on the map when it was picked up for worldwide distribution and became a smash hit everywhere it played, making Gibson a huge name solely by virtue of him being in an international hit movie filmed in English (albeit with Australian accents that prompted a redubbing during its U.S. run) rather than by traveling down the sordid highways and byways of Hollywood in order to wrangle his way in. It also raised issues about the basic degeneration of society into violence and chaos if and when the central infrastructure ever started to collapse onto itself and then survival would become a way of life for us all. It is unclear if the story takes place in either an alternate universe or a post apocalyptic scenario, although the sequels make it clear that a nuclear war HAS happened in the rest of the world thus making the Australian outback the final frontier for mankind to play on, so it may be a little bit of both (although as said the movie never makes it quite clear what kind of events are playing out elsewhere in the world even with its TV newscasts that are shown, so it’s entirely possible that the all out nuke war hasn’t even happened yet at this point in time). Still, it’s a bit jarring to see the policemen in this society decked out in all leather gear and for the code of the roads to be in essence survival of the fittest, with little concern shown by these cops for the lives of the criminals that they pursue. The film opens with an all out police pursuit that quickly elevates itself easily into being one of the top 5 best cinema chase scenes ever even BEFORE Gibson’s Max Rockatansky joins in on the fun. It turns out that a crazed, giggling psychopath called “The Nightrider” has not only escaped, but has made off with one of the police force’s very rare Super Charged V8s, and he just rolls along before he runs into Max, who psychs him out by winning a game of chicken and reduces him to tears before sending him flying into a fiery crash and burn. Bad news though, as it turns out that this character was actually fulfilling a mission to use that specific car to spread damage, wreckage, and mayhem everywhere he went, and now was considered a martyr to be avenged by a rampaging motorcycle gang that it turns out is almost a cult like group led by their wanna be messiah like leader named Toecutter, played by Hugh Keays-Byrne in a performance that can almost be described as being like Charles Manson in a helmet and goggles, and the classically trained Shakespearean actor makes the most of almost every line of dialogue and every closeup to convey his charismatic yet demonic essence, whether it be by “giving absolution” to his disciple bikers as they ride past him while he sits in a pickup truck to terrifying females with his unnerving way of speaking to them to his mock showing of fear when a little old lady with leg braces pulls a shotgun on him, the performance speaks volumes of what can happen when you cast an actor who knows exactly what he’s doing with such a stock villain part (enabling him to return in the NEW Max film albeit as a different character). Along with his crew (including a crazy, stupid kid whose overall guilt is somewhat in doubt), they declare war on the cops, especially Max and his best friend and partner (Steve Bisley, a real life friend of Gibson’s whom he graduated acting school with), eventually zeroing in on Max himself and his innocent wife and child, with the final moments of the film setting up and establishing the Max character for the rest of the series, that of a once civilized, stable family man whose worst fear was of becoming just as bad as the degenerates on the road that he hunted down, to the “Mad” Max that we know, a broken man who now realizes that after his final actions here that there is NO going back to normal society (or what’s left of it), and that it’s best for him to just wander off into the wilderness alone, taking his chances and using his survival skills that he has always had to their full extent. And with this Gibson (along with Miller to a certain point) wrote his own ticket into Hollywood with a performance that was certainly more built on charisma and presence than acting chops (as opposed to Keays-Byrne), but definitely showed even then that Mel had the market entirely cornered when it came to edgy, borderline psychotic good guys, going so far as to usher in that new era and continue the build towards the modern age. Certainly Miller as director was trying to exploit the muscle car craze that was VERY popular in Australia at that time, and with that managed to get some all time amazing and groundbreaking stuntwork on a relatively paltry budget. The themes of all out violence and anarchy in a dying society that somehow still had at that time a working police force, operational hospitals, and even small business owners still plying their trade all while knowing the whole time that something bad could happen to them and that there wouldn’t be much that they could do about it, coupled with maniacs like Toecutter who wanted to be the first ones to take full credit for finally burning the whole bullshit detail to the ground, makes for a fascinating, original vision that rightly captivated the world when they saw it for the first time, and continues to amaze even today. As the last vestiges of what we once had slipped away forever and Max’s worst fears about himself became horrifically, viscerally real, so must we all wonder when it comes to the most paranoid fears of those among us even today about just what kind of human beings we might descend into becoming if an all out fight for survival suddenly became part of our normal, everyday existence, or even whether we would actually survive at all, in turn becoming a daily crapshoot that no amount of training, preparation, or inherent toughness can guarantee would actually be the case for any of us. Making it onto True Romance’s Clarence Worley’s short list of “real” movies is only the beginning for the long lasting impact of this film, with Gibson turning this into a trilogy where the action and nilhilism were second to none, and now with a new movie being released (with the Max role being recast due to Gibson’s recent problems rendering him to be considered radioactive at the box office), it shows that there’s nothing a low budget can ever stop when actual talent and creativity are truly at play…
10/10