Mad
Max (1979)
The Maximum Force of the Future
Director
- George Miller
Writers - George Miller, Byron Kennedy
Starring - Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Steve
Bisley, Tim Burns, Roger Ward, Lisa Aldenhoven, David Bracks,
Bertrand Cadart, David Cameron
Review by Noel Baily
A
quarter of a century on now (from the original filming) and
still an icon of Aussie movie making!
It was the very rawness and budgetary constraints of this
little flick that made it what it was. A new kind of action
hero in a new kind of world! Gibson's laughably underpaid
(though unavoidably so) contribution cannot be underestimated.
He imbued Max with more than the script actually merited.
An attitude perhaps that struck a chord with many office-desk
(wannabe) vigilantes. After all, Max takes control of his
own life - is not cowed by authority. Max is everyman, the
one inside us that few get the chance to let loose. He is
part Jesus, part Che, part James Dean, all Australian yobbo!
But this guy gets the job done.
Raw
energy is what MAD MAX was all about! Distilled, tempered
and inflamed by the time THE ROAD WARRIOR came around but
at this juncture. a man on a mission and with the best tricked-up
car since....well, THE CAR ! For those of you incidentally,
totally mortified that his glorious black-hearted Interceptor
was rendered dead-meat in MAD MAX 2, be comforted by the fact
that it DOES in fact reside still in a museum in London (Why
there and not Sydney I know not...perhaps for the same reason
Australia still is not host to the cricket-ashes urn!) What
chance of either's return when Greece can't even get the Elgin
Marbles back?
Much
has been made (and remembered) of the high-power car chases
in this film, held by many in absolute reverence. In fact
after the main cops vs The Nightrider work-out in the first
few minutes of the flick, its pretty much all downhill in
the action stakes - nothing subsequently in MAD MAX (1) comes
near this brief sequence. This situation (with a way bigger
budget) was inarguably reversed by the time THE ROAD WARRIOR
came along. The stunts in THAT film have never been surpassed
and remember this was without CGI fx.
MAD
MAX has that indefinable 'something" the sequels didn't...perhaps
just a raw innovation couldn't be duplicated - rather like
ur first kiss. It might not have been the best, but it sure
IS fondly remembered.
|
