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Mad Max [1979]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

The story of Mel Gibson's stately anti-hero begins in Mad Max, George Miller's low-budget debut, in which Max is a "Bronze" (cop) in an unspecified post-apocalyptic future with a buddy-partner and family. But, unlike most films set in the devastated future, Mad Max is notable because it is poised between our industrialised world and total regression to medieval conditions. The scale tips towards disintegration when the Glory Riders burn into town on their bikes like an overcharged cadre of Brando's Wild Ones. Representing the active chaos that will eventually overwhelm the dying vestiges of civil society they take everything dear to Max, who then has to exact due revenge. His flight into the same wilds that created the villains artfully sets up the morally ambiguous character of the subsequent films. --Alan E Rapp, Amazon.com


High speed road movie that changed cinema
Review date: 2008-03-03 Rating: 10 out of 10

High speed chases, open endless roads and nomad bikers in a post-apocalyptic vision of the future. Mel Gibson is Max, a police/highway patrolman who is determined to live his life clean and rid the roads of the scum that terrorise them. Events transpire that catapult him into another world, another outlook and new way of doing his job. A great film that looks as good as it sounds. Still modern and still plenty to admire. The film 'Saw' has a lot to thank this film for..!

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Reviews


Road Kill
Review date: 2007-12-01 Rating: 4 out of 10

This is a very slow movie which seems like the script wasnt quite finished..maby i need to see the trilogy to appreciate it..but i was not impressed not very mad I say. Plot holes were left right and centre but hey what can you do eh?..oh and i suggest before you watch it you take off the american dubbing and have the original australian. I think that helped spoil it for me.Sorri for the sour milk people but i gotta tell it like it is! One

The Last Law in a World Gone Out Of Control!!!
Review date: 2007-11-21 Rating: 10 out of 10

All I can say about this cult classic is buy it as it's one of the best road movie\apocalyptic science fiction movies you will ever see and is a must in any DVD collection. Here's hoping the prequel will be just as good, fingers crossed.

Superbly simple
Review date: 2007-09-07 Rating: 8 out of 10

Mad Max 2 is the better film, for sure: it's bigger, grislier, and more exciting. But the original is very good not just because it explains why Max is perturbed, but because it does so without compromising his character's silent and innate masculinity - which is some feat considering the amount of skin-tight leather on show.

Max himself - skilfully underplayed by Mel Gibson - is at the heart of all the main narrative turns. It's he who kills the Nightrider; his best friend who's murdered by the gang that wants to get to him; his family who are targeted for the final showdown. And yet Max is on screen quite rarely. Not that he needs to be seen: he is an archetype of sorts; the last spring of morality in an apocalyptic desert.

Thanks to a tight and sympathetic script, Max and Jessie's relationship is entirely convincing. The music, by Brian May (no, not that one), is superbly melodramatic; always complementary, never intrusive.

It's not complex. At one point Max tells his boss that if he spends any more time on the road he'll "be one of them" - we know what territory we're in, and it's not about blurring moral boundaries; it's about raw, red-blooded revenge.

That's when a myth started of a crazy rider
Review date: 2007-07-30 Rating: 10 out of 10

The first film of the Mad Max trilogy is not a great film at all. But it is the birth certificate of a cult character, Mad Max himself. A simple film about crazy bikers on Australian roads where they think they can do what they want. Against them a special unit of cops who are supposed to chase them and get them off the road. It is then a real war between the two clans, the hooligans and the law. Till one day Max decides to retire and go away with his wife and child to some peaceful country ranch. But if you don't chase the bikers, the bikers will come chasing you, and that's exactly what happens. The bikers come chasing after Max's wife and child who they manage to kidnap. The characters are obnoxious, so true that they seem real, cruel but not to make anyone suffer, just because it is some kind of entertainment in their idle boredom doing nothing at all and living on the local population they ransack and exploit. In such a situation no reason exists and the powerless must die. Then the ex-cop quits his quitted situation and un-quits his own idleness and goes back into the profession and starts chasing the bikers to death. And he will just do that, one after the other and in spite of crippling wounds. We touch there the fundamental myth of these films: the hero is necessarily a re-incarnation of the savior of the world who is able to survive any mishap and even resurrect if necessary. The interest of the film is the simplicity of the argument: these primitive people who might even not have a mind of their own are playing tick-tack-toe with the lives of the others and the crazy madman will necessarily have the final advantage and will get the last eye and the last tooth. This film shows how simple life is for these people who only think with their death instinct and feel with their desire to kill. The whole world is the color of blood and hatred.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Hugh Keays-Byrne
Steve Bisley
Tim Burns
Joanne Samuel
Mel Gibson

Creators:
Mel Gibson (Primary Contributor)
Joanne Samuel (Primary Contributor)
David Eggby (Cinematographer)
George Miller (Writer)
Cliff Hayes (Editor)
Bill Miller (Producer)
Byron Kennedy (Producer)
Byron Kennedy (Writer)
James McCausland (Writer)

Director(s):

Recording label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
EAN: 7321900111706
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2006-06-01
Number of discs: 1
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 88 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1983-01-19
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: Arabic (Subtitled)
Language: Bulgarian (Subtitled)
Language: Dutch (Subtitled)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: French (Subtitled)
Language: German (Subtitled)
Language: Italian (Subtitled)
Language: Portuguese (Subtitled)
Language: Romanian (Subtitled)
Language: Spanish (Subtitled)
Language: French (Dubbed)
Language: Italian (Dubbed)

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