Great poster! Nothing like the film though…
While Mad Max has become a worldwide cult classic in the last quarter century or so the fact is that after the opening 12 minutes the best part of the film is already over.
But it’s a great 12 minutes, a daringly staged pursuit featuring many muscle cars of the era all moving at high speed with scant regard for the stuntmen or the vehicles themselves.
The sequence concludes with some equally breathtaking high speed crashes and enough debris scattered over the remote Australian country roads to keep a guy with a metal collector busy for a month.
Unfortunately for the man driving the vehicle attempting to allude the pursuers, the self dubbed ‘Night Rider’, and for Max Rokatansky (Mel Gibson), the pursuit ends with casualties.
This leads to the arrival of a wacky motorcycle gang lead by a smoky voiced man named The Toecutter. He and his band of nutjobs and lunatics are after two things, the body of the Night Rider. And Max.
Now even though this is allegedly a dystopian view of the future – though I would argue it is more a rough neighbourhood in rural Australia – it still takes quite a bit to get Max ‘Mad’.
The entrée arrives when Goose, his best mate on the force, is lightly sautéed. Then the main arrives which sees his wife and son depart, before the dessert course of canine a la chunks.
Actually the dog was second but it just didn’t seem right to have the housepet and not the missus and kid as the main course…
With Toecutter and the crew now demanding Max’s attention he finds a big black muscle car and goes to work, though in true 70s style it really is only the last few minutes where he really gets shit done.
Mad Max – aka The Road Warrior – would really deserve its spot in the cult cinema hall of fame, were it not for Mad Max 2, which takes every element in this film and makes them better. Harsher terrain, more crazy crazies, more desperate desperadoes and bigger and better car chases.
Final Rating – 7 / 10. Mad Max is like the reasonably hot chick with the misfortune of standing next to Miranda Kerr, on any other day they would be the centre of the room but… hey isn’t that Miranda Kerr!!!
