MAD MAX If you had to work for a guy named Fifi, you'd be mad too Every time I see Mad Max, I'm a little more impressed by how scary it is. It's built up its reputation over the years mostly as a great car-chase action movie, and make no mistake, this movie has the best car chases I've ever seen. But Gone In 60 Seconds this ain't; every chase is life-or-death for people who aren't asking to be in these situations. The characters aren't exhilarated by the chase, they're terrified at the prospect of being raped and murdered. Mad Max carries a weight, a knowing sorrow for and fear of the consequences of violence, that most action movies dismiss. Mad Max takes place "A few years from now", when oil resources have been depleted enough to call for gas rationing, at least in Australia. (just what the rest of the world looks like, is not suggested) Society hasn't collapsed yet, but it's definitely on a downward spiral, particularly in the country where people need gas just to get to their neighbor's house. In this environment, a nomadic gang led by the weirdly melodramatic Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne) is able to basically rape and murder anybody they want to with impunity, since nobody can run or drive fast enough to catch them...or get away from them. The cops do what they can, often getting themselves injured or killed in the process, but only one of them, Max (Mel Gibson) has much success, which leads the gang to target his partner, then his wife and child for revenge. The story is pretty much undercooked, bloody meat and barely-peeled potatoes; it's the pulpily frank and brutal way it's carried out that helps make this movie special. There is never a point in the movie during which the viewer rolls his eyes at the dangers on-screen, knowing that for the sake of the plot, certain characters have to survive; we only know that Max has to, and everybody else could have anything happen to them at any time. Gibson seems to be set up as a fairly routinely empty-headed hero with his introduction; for one thing, the poster art is some of the most bad-assed I've ever seen. Then he's slowly brought in with a kind of macho grandeur which would later be employed on the likes of several Stallone characters, and the first time we see him step out of his car, he's wearing tight-fitting head-to-toe black leather in the middle of the Australian desert - that's how tough he is! But it becomes apparent soon enough that, aside from his job, he's something of an everyman. He even quits the force because he'd rather spend time with his wife, child and mother-in-law. It's this everyman quality that makes so much of this movie so unsettling; you EXPECT bad shit to happen to an action hero's family, and going into killing-machine mode is more or less a foregone conclusion. When Max gets his leg broken (shot, actually...thanks Paddy) and his arm ran over twice, and fuelled by pure rage he just keeps going after the villains (dangerously enough that they'd rather drive off than fight him), it isn't an attempt at a stand-up-and-cheer moment like you'd get in, say, Cobra; it's actually a pretty disturbing transformation. Certainly, the classic handcuff-and-hacksaw scene at the climax makes us wonder just how many of his marbles Max has left. The central question that this movie seems to want to address is if there are any heroes anymore; Max doesn't give us an easy answer, at least not in this film. One of the interesting things about this gang is that they don't have any guns; their tools of violence are chains, cleavers, their bikes, their sheer numbers. In fact, the only time they seem to be afraid of anything (other than their leader) is when they're held at bay with a gun, which happens twice. There would be more or less a different case in the sequels, but for now, Mad Max is one of the more unambiguously pro-gun movies out there. And yet, the guns are never used for anything more than that, at least not successfully; people might shoot AT the gang, but they miss. (correction, courtesy of Paddy again - actually the gang does have two guns, and I remember them quite well now that I've been reminded...I can't believe I said they didn't have any, but in my defense they only use them twice despite having lots of more opportunities, apparently preferring to get their hands dirty.) The score by Brian May (no, not THAT Brian May) is alternately frightening and melodramatic, nicely complimenting both the scenes of terror and of pulp drama. George Miller's direction of the car chases is superb, brilliantly conveying speed (and the dangers of it) without the quick-cut nonsense which we see so much of today. He's not quite as adept at the more sentimental scenes, with Max's family, but they do what's necessary, and the unconditional affection we see there is a lonely bright spot in a fairly hopeless movie, and something we wouldn't see any more of until the second sequel. His work shines the most with the scenes of violence; the scene where the bikers are chasing down two people while a third helplessly tries to catch up on foot is one of the most horrifying scenes I've ever seen, in any genre. In one of those stupid moves that's so thuddingly mindless it just makes me want to scream, most (maybe all) of the North American tapes of this movie have had all the dialogue dubbed over by American actors, so that we wouldn't be scared away by all of these Australian accents. I still haven't seen this movie with the original voices. Mad Max was a bloody huge success, and had the highest profit-to-cost ratio of any movie for about twenty years, until The Blair Witch Project came along. It has led to two sequels, to date, and despite some on-off plans for a third, I don't see it happening any time soon (it has, after all, been sixteen years since the last one). Every time I see this, I'm also a little bewildered by how successful it was; it's not exactly a "good time". But it deserved its success, and its long-standing reputation. There have been a lot of action movies over the years that asked to be taken straight, instead of as nothing more than a fun but forgettable good time; most couldn't pull it off, but Mad Max is the real thing. BACK TO THE M's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE