Product: Mad Max (1979)
Rating: 5.0
Suburban crume terminator
That's where it all started. In Australia and nowhere else. And I must say that landscape is impressive. It was science fiction at the time and it no longer is. In spite of all, we have grown into that kind of frantic frenzy, criminally biased and with no one to stop them. We are today speaking, and have been for a while, of a new criminal organization, a new mafia, a new gangsterism and it has come not to the desert but to our cities, to our suburban areas. These new criminals do not want power, control, or even influence. They just want to make money and to get the thrill of absolute fear around them, no matter what thrill actually, but the thrill of robbing, killing, blowing up. They have no political motivations like in the late 60s and early 70s. They just want to feel blood on their hands and smell powder in their nostrils. They are not even well organized as money making criminals. They take tremendous risks and don't even hide their tracks. Being run after by the cops is fun and they can kill one from time to time, a pregnant young female cop if possible. We have fully entered the modern criminal urban civil war and we better move our heads and rake our brains if we do not want them to take over whole neighborhoods where the law is going to be their law. That's exactly what Mad Max is showing and demonstrating. That's our future, that's already our present. If you don't believe it just check with Grenoble in the Alps or wherever there has been an "incident" (it should be called an ambush or a battle) of that type. What's more Mel Gibson had seen that the good ones in our society, those who have authority will most of them decide that it is going against the human rights of these new criminals if we want to shoot them when they have a bullet proof vest on and a heavy automatic gun in their hands. Some in the press even believe you must - not should, mind you - ask them for permission before shooting at them, and they no longer use light guns. They use heavy military weapons. Some even call themselves the barbarians of the latter days and one of these gangs (all the members are in prison right now) tortured a young Jew to death over several days just because he was a Jew, and the leader of the gang managed to go back to his homeland in Africa to find refuge, which he luckily did not find because he was extradited back to France and what tried for his crime. There is only one way with these: get the wolf out of the wood and declare the hunting season open and that species of wolves no longer protected except if they surrender and put their weapons down BEFORE killing, or even wounding, anyone. That sounds harsh but I have lived through the end of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a piece of the end, and I can tell you there is nothing else to do because anyone of them who will manage to get out of the final stand in which they are trapped will start shooting again tomorrow morning as soon as they walk free on parole. France has had its batch of terrorism in the late 80s and early 90s but Mesrine was not tried and a few others were not either. I regret Carlos was. That kind of an outlaw does not really deserve a trial. I am told we must respect the human rights of these criminals. I could if their crimes were crimes of passion. But their crimes are crimes of blood, of greed, of absolute destruction. Mad Max got them all. Good. Unluckily that will not bring the victims of these barbarians back to life, will it?Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID