Mad Max - Melodrama on a Shoestring

Jan

24

Mad Max - Melodrama on a Shoestring

≡ Category: Action, Australia, Movie Reviews, Recommended |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: Australia
Genre: Action
Director: George Miller
Year: 1979

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

Director George Miller lets you know you’re in good hands within the first minute or two of Mad Max. The tone is extremely specific. The music score is vaguely self-mocking — it could have come from an early 1960s television war series, like the Rat Patrol. But the dialog and some canny visual clues reveal that some apocalyptic event has occurred and that the basic rules of society have changed. While waiting for instruction from headquarters, a cop draws a bead on a couple making love on a blanket in a field using a rifle equipped with a scope. When his partner revs the motor of their cruiser, the couple takes off like rabbits, as if they knew that being picked off by a policeman sniper was a distinct possibility.

In no time at all, we’re aware that society is now a war zone populated by crazies with road rage and cops who are only marginally less psychotic. One of the relatively sane ones is Max (Mel Gibson), who is shown to have nerves of steel in the opening scene, but is mentally stabilized by a wife and child. In a nicely humanizing touch, the wife plays the saxophone.

Another thing we learn — George Miller is a natural at staging action scenes, developing tension, and razor sharp editing. (Actually, Miller manually edited Mad Max on his kitchen table with a razor and two mounted reels. He didn’t even have a Moviola to edit with.)

When Max takes down The Nightrider, one of a group of crazies, it’s only a matter of time until they want revenge.

Mad Max is pure melodrama, spiked with sick humor so that the lack of production values is made part of the joke. And where it counts, director Miller delivers the goods. The car chase and crash scenes rank with anything done up until then, with the exception of The French Connection, and maybe Bullitt. Mel Gibson displays the magnetism that made him a star.

Another plus — since director George Miller was trained as a medical doctor, the special effects makeup depicting the carnage is fairly realistic.

If Mad Max is a little shaggy in spots, that is due to Miller’s seriously constrained budget. My only criticism is that, after efficiently riling up the audience so that they howl for the blood of the villains, the scenes that detail their comeuppance are not sufficiently sadistic. In one scene, a simple matter of crosscutting would have done the trick.

Even so, it remains indisputable that Miller manages to make a very watchable melodrama for pennies. He was forced to not film several chase scenes because the production was running out of money. He even sacrificed his own personal van in a crash sequence. But it all paid off. With his next film, Mad Max 2 (known over on this side of the pond as The Road Warrior), Miller would go on to make one of the greatest car chase movies of all time.