Mad MaxThe road to madness is a long and bitter path. Mad Max is an action movie set "a few years from now", in a dystopian future where murderous motorcycle gangs run wild, and hardened cops like Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) are outnumbered and outmaneuvered by their insane opponents. Max harbors an inner darkness to deliver brutal justice to psychopaths like the biker leader called "Toecutter" (Hugh Keays-Byrne), but restrains his fury for the love of his wife, Jessie (Joanne Samuel) and son, Sprog (Brendan Heath). When Toecutter and his gang cross the line, there is nothing that will save them from Max's vengeance--mercy has been left in the dust.
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Mad Max introduces the road warrior, Max, whose high-octane exploits would continue in sequels almost forty years later, with the most recent entry being Mad Max: Fury Road. The world of Mad Max is chaotic and on edge; but it is not yet the post-apocalyptic wasteland introduced in the sequel, Mad Max 2. Mad Max feels like a character-establishing backstory for Max Rockatansky in retrospect. The tragedy which befalls his family is meant to engender sympathy for Max's descent from a lawman to a force of vengeance. There is something deadly sharp about Max from the start; while his fellow officers scramble to apprehend a cop-killing member of Toecutter's gang calling himself "The Nightrider" (Vincent Gil), the savvy Max has already plotted out the perp's path on the road, and lies in wait. Max challenges the psycho to a game of chicken and wins, which leads to The Nightrider's death. Max appears surprised by The Nightrider's explosive end, but it is suggested that Max wanted this to be the result--he knows that evil maniacs cannot be allowed to roam free, and to do so is to invite tragedy. Max is a smart cop; he's intimately familiar with the long and winding roads where he works, but he also knows that his job is feeding his inner demon, which relishes the violence he delivers in the name of justice. That the world of Mad Max is falling into disorder and entropy can be found in the way that the police look and operate. Max and his comrades are uniformed in black leather outfits, and behave more like a tight-knit gang than peace officers. Many of them are undisciplined and reckless, endangering the public as much as the criminals in their pursuits. They drive around in police interceptors that look like they belong in a stock car race, and chase the bad guys with a single-minded fervor. Rather than taking the obvious route of depicting the police in Mad Max as corrupt or irresponsible, they are instead the last holdouts against the likes of Toecutter. The biker gangs are difficult to deal with because of the vast territory the cops have to cover; even when they are apprehended, the killers are defended by sniveling lawyers who use technicalities to get their clients back on the street. With the cards stacked against them, it's no surprise that most of these cops go a little batty--consider what it does to Max's partner, Goose (Steve Bisley). With all of this madness and agitation, combined with the pervading sensation of impending chaos, the nuclear war that happens in the sequel seems less like a surprise than an inevitability.
"The road" is as much a part of Mad Max as he is--it is his companion and his burden. Mad Max features a multitude of car chases on vast expanses of highway; although born out of practicality, the roads of Mad Max are also a metaphor for Max's existential crisis. He does his job on the road, and truly comes alive in the thick of combat and the chase--when he gives in to his demon. The happiest moments of Mad Max are the simple, touching scenes with him and his family. He watches his lovely wife play the saxophone, and teases her with a latex monster mask when she seems a bit grouchy; they even secret messages in exchange sign language, telling one another, "I'm crazy about you". Max tries to take a vacation with his family after he has a crisis of conscience about his job. This comes after a vengeful Toecutter dragoons his sniveling protegee, Johnny the Boy (Tim Burns), into incinerating Goose. Toecutter crosses paths with Max's family, and Jess is accosted and harried by the burly thug at every turn, because she had the temerity to stand up to him. Toecutter and his cronies are beyond reason, and in their pursuit of Jess and the family, they destroy Max's flimsy hope that he could have a life free from chaos and violence. Max crosses the proverbial Rubicon and appropriates the 600-horsepower muscle car pieced together by the mechanics at the dismal "Halls of Justice" he calls headquarters. He trades in his bright interceptor for one that is jet black--matching his uniform and sawed-off shotgun; it is a metaphor representing his blackened soul and the dark work ahead of him. His battlefield is the road, and it is the only family left to him. He stares out into the vast, open terrain with a look of a man possessed, driven with the single-minded mission to avenge--a "cop" in the extreme. Max's transformation along this long, black road recalls a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche: "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
Recommended for: Fans of an action movie loaded with car chases, explosions, and gunplay--impressive considering its running time of just over an hour and a half. Mad Max depicts a near-future, "Wild West meets the Outback" conflict between lawlessness and order as well as between madness and vengeance, and was so popular that for a long time it held the record for the most "profitable" movie ever made.
"The road" is as much a part of Mad Max as he is--it is his companion and his burden. Mad Max features a multitude of car chases on vast expanses of highway; although born out of practicality, the roads of Mad Max are also a metaphor for Max's existential crisis. He does his job on the road, and truly comes alive in the thick of combat and the chase--when he gives in to his demon. The happiest moments of Mad Max are the simple, touching scenes with him and his family. He watches his lovely wife play the saxophone, and teases her with a latex monster mask when she seems a bit grouchy; they even secret messages in exchange sign language, telling one another, "I'm crazy about you". Max tries to take a vacation with his family after he has a crisis of conscience about his job. This comes after a vengeful Toecutter dragoons his sniveling protegee, Johnny the Boy (Tim Burns), into incinerating Goose. Toecutter crosses paths with Max's family, and Jess is accosted and harried by the burly thug at every turn, because she had the temerity to stand up to him. Toecutter and his cronies are beyond reason, and in their pursuit of Jess and the family, they destroy Max's flimsy hope that he could have a life free from chaos and violence. Max crosses the proverbial Rubicon and appropriates the 600-horsepower muscle car pieced together by the mechanics at the dismal "Halls of Justice" he calls headquarters. He trades in his bright interceptor for one that is jet black--matching his uniform and sawed-off shotgun; it is a metaphor representing his blackened soul and the dark work ahead of him. His battlefield is the road, and it is the only family left to him. He stares out into the vast, open terrain with a look of a man possessed, driven with the single-minded mission to avenge--a "cop" in the extreme. Max's transformation along this long, black road recalls a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche: "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
Recommended for: Fans of an action movie loaded with car chases, explosions, and gunplay--impressive considering its running time of just over an hour and a half. Mad Max depicts a near-future, "Wild West meets the Outback" conflict between lawlessness and order as well as between madness and vengeance, and was so popular that for a long time it held the record for the most "profitable" movie ever made.