Product: Mad Max (1979)
Rating: 5.0
Raw, powerful retelling of lawlessness and revenge
`Mad Max', an Australian flick and one of the very first movies to feature Mel Gibson has probably been seen by most people after they saw the two sequels, `The Road Warrior' and `Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome'. This circumstance has probably lead to a lot of misunderstandings about the circumstances of the original `Mad Max' plot.Basicly, the story is about the failure of an organized system of justice, leading to a downward spiral of individual, outlaw revenge and retribution. Unlike the relatively new post-apocalyptic genres exemplified by the latter two movies, the issues of revenge are as old as the classic Greek playwrights, all the way up through Eugene O'Neill's take on the old Greek story of revenge in `Mourning Becomes Electra'.There is but one little clue that this is a post nuclear war scenario. This is when we see a rusty and delapidated sign warning of a `Forbidden Area'. The only corroboration is the relatively poor condition of the sign over the entrance to the police station. Balanced against these minor visual clues is the spanking new sign over the door to the service station indicating that this is a licensed auto mechanic and the very clean and efficient looking hospital room and building.So, if there is any failure of civilization, it is largely metaphorical and seen in the failure of the constraints of lawful behavior to prevent a series of events based on unbridled libido and revenge.Of the `Mad Max' trilogy, the second, `The Road Warrior' is probably the best for many reasons, and it's connection to our current subject is loose at best and it's production values are far superior, but our original has an odd rawness about it which should not be confused with poor quality. TV stations would not be running this flick regularly if it did not have something special to offer.By far the most valuable currency offered up by `Mad Max' is the anxiety created for Max's wife and child in the last third of the movie. The fear is about as raw as it comes, with an odd similarity, based on the crude cinematic technique all the way around, with the terror of the original `Texas Chain Saw Massacre'. The horror movie is much less artfully done and draws a lot of it's impact from pure quantity of gore, but there is a strong sense that both movies gain from a lack of polish.Oddly, I think most of the juice in this movie comes less from Gibson's performance as that of the heavies. Unlike Harrison Ford's early appearances in `Star Wars', for example, I see little of the promise which Gibson shows in the second and third films in this series.I will go out of my way to watch the second and third movies, but the first, this `Mad Max' is really something of a guilty pleasure which survives rewatching and grows in stature as time goes by.