In my opinion, movie makers should always list the name of the actor who appears the most throughout the film first. You might get the idea that since Mel Gibson is the most prominent actor to be found in this movie, it focuses on him and not anybody else. You would be wrong. Mad Max actually spends way more time taking a look at what his adversaries are doing, with his character only starting to appear regularly in the last 30 minutes or so. Not only this, but he doesn't have a neutral, american accent, so it took me a while to realize it was really him. Because it started a big franchise, you would think that Mad Max would have a huge, elaborate story akin to something like Star Wars. In fact, the movie is really straightforward for the most part, but that didn't stop the producers from milking it for all that it's worth. It's not an amazing movie, and most of it is quite depressing. This has a lot to do with the environments. Mad Max takes place in a dystopian version of Australia, where there's no more rules and people fight just to survive. Throughout the movie, we can easily see the fact that australia is a giant floating desert in the middle of nowhere. In this inhospitable environment, a member of a motorcycle gang, called "Nightrider" by his friends, kills a cop who belonged to an australian highway patrol squad. The squad's most experienced officer, Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) pursues Nightrider and causes him to crash. Nightrider's gang later finds out about his fiery demise and decide to ride into a town to cause trouble and make people afraid. Goose (Steve Bisley), Max's sidekick, manages to arrest one of the gang members, which leads to the gang setting him in their sights. When Goose is driving one day, a gang member throws a brake drum right through his windshield, making him swerve off the road and crash. Unable to escape the overturned and badly damaged truck, Goose is defenseless as the gang member pours gas near him and burns him alive. Max later sees Goose's horribly immolated body in a hospital, and he's somehow still alive. This traumatic experience leads to Max expressing how he wants to quit being on highway patrol duty. Shortly after, Max and his wife Jessie (Joanne Samuel) take a joyride in a van, but the gang manages to follow them. Max drives to a farm owned by a friendly old woman, which leads to more confrontations with the criminals. After trying to drive his family to safety, Max's van breaks down, and both his wife and infant son are tragically killed. Having no family left, Max now makes it his mission in life to stop Nightrider's gang, whatever the cost. He is shot in the knee after falling for a trap the gang leaves on the roadside in the form of an empty car, but still manages to kill the gang members in brutal ways. One of them is crashed into by a semi truck. At last, Max finds Johnny, the gang member responsible for burning Goose in the ghastly attack earlier. Max handcuffs Johnny's leg to a nearby truck he's trying to steal and uses its leaking gas supply to kill him in an explosion. Max drives off, having avenged his family. Upon its release, Mad Max was widely hated for its shocking amount of violence and lack of any real moral values. Gibson arguably does the right thing by killing the men responsible for killing his family, but the movie makers seemed to have a preference for watching people die horribly. One australian reviewer even went as far as to say Mad Max is as cheerful as Mein Kamph, and future rapists will probably love it. Stephen King also didn't like it, which is ironic considering the types of things he's known for writing. Despite this, it hides the fact that Mad Max is probably the most successful and recognized movie to come out of australia (aside from Crocodile Dundee). I don't know what it is about that country, but their movies always seem to have a large amount of tough characters who seem to revel in the nightmarish situations they get into. Mad Max epitomizes this.
Review of Mad Max
