Most people would agree with Wes Craven's saying that "sequels suck", yet there are some notable exceptions to the rule. One such exception is Mad Max 2 a.k.a. The Road Warrior, one of the most successful and influential movies of the last decade. So, the logical question arises: if the sequel is so revered, is the original also good or even better? The answer to that question lies in Mad Max, a 1979 Australian action movie that launched the careers of director George Miller and today's Hollywood megastar Mel Gibson, as well as a commercial boom of Australian cinema in the 1980s.
Although the opening title puts the plot of this movie in the near future, on the surface the world looks pretty much the same as today's. The only difference is the decline of public services, including law enforcement, which has opened the way for psychopathic biker gangs to make the roads and countryside their undisputed realm. The small yet dedicated police force uses its powerful, and at the same time obsolete, machines in a losing battle to prevent the law and civilisation from becoming a distant memory. The best among them is Max Rokatansky (Mel Gibson), a supreme killing machine on the road, whose skills are again proven in a deadly confrontation that leaves the escaped cop-killing biker Nightrider (Vince Gill) dead. However, Max is at the same time a dedicated family man, and after seeing too many of his colleagues hurt or killed in a futile struggle, he contemplates quitting and takes his wife and son on holiday. Unfortunately, the bikers, led by Toecutter (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne), have already marked Max as a target because of Nightrider's death and they kill his family in the process. Having nothing else to live for, Max returns to the road, but this time not as a policeman, but as an avenging maniac, using all of his abilities to track and kill the bikers, even in the vast areas abandoned by legal authority.
In many ways, the plot of Mad Max looks like a combination of vigilante cop thriller and B-western. Many have also argued that the mild futuristic motifs serve only as an excuse for an hour and a half of brutal non-stop violence. On the other hand, even those critics who question the film's originality praise Miller for the talent he showed in his great cinematic debut. Mad Max was made on a ridiculously small budget (it was edited by Miller himself in his own bedroom), yet it didn't look cheap. On the contrary, some of the stunts and action scenes are spectacular and breathtaking. The small budget also worked to the movie's advantage; forced to use second-hand equipment as props, Miller painted a picture of industrial decay in order to illustrate the decaying state of future civilisation.
Miller's vision of the near future, which would be even more developed in the next two Mad Max films, was actually inspired by current events. The great fuel crisis of 1973 suddenly showed the great, and until then unthinkable, vulnerability of Western civilisation. The loss of faith in progress and technology coincided with the great moral void left by the breakdown of traditional social values in the 1960s. Miller, and many like him, feared that the fall of industrial institutions would lead to anarchy and new barbarism, because society wouldn't be able to protect the individual, now forced to live without any moral compass. Such ideas were already explored in Jeremiah, a cult comic book by Belgian artist Hermann, whose influence, together with the Mad Max movies, would later inspire a whole sub-genre of post-apocalyptic movies. Anyway, the original Mad Max fell into line with a whole series of dark, dystopian science fiction movies that were very popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Apart from the dark tone that corresponded with the pessimistic feel of the time, Mad Max also succeeded because it was a good movie. Mel Gibson was well cast in the role of an at least nominally civilised policeman who later turns into a homicidal maniac, not very different from those he tried to stop. Gibson very effectively portrays his gradual slide into madness, and this experience would serve him well in his later role as Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon. The other actors were also good and gave depth to the well-drawn and strong characters, such as the psychotic Nightrider, the evil Toecutter, the cool yet deadly Bubba Zanetti (played by Geoff Parry) or the stoned Johnny the Boy (played by Tim Burns), who would stick long in our memory, despite their relatively brief appearances in this relatively short film. Sadly, among them, only Steve Bisley, who plays Max's larger-than-life friend and colleague Jim Goose, gained some name recognition in later years. The character of Jesse, Max's wife, was somewhat undeveloped and the family scenes seemed a little stereotyped, with a cheerfulness and sentimentalism that provide an unnecessary contrast to the dark and pessimistic tone of the whole picture. Brian May's score, on the other hand, was good, yet not as powerful as some other science fiction soundtracks of that era. But, on the whole, Mad Max, despite being slightly inferior to its more influential sequel, is still a very effective piece of cinema, that can entertain us while forcing us to think about some unpleasant topics. RATING: 8/10 (+++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on October 19th 1998)
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