Mad Max (George Miller, 1979)

In the near future, society is breaking down.

Young cop Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) is torn between the demands of his career and his desire to spend more time with his wife Jessie (Joanne Samuel) and their young son.

However, the arrival of a biker gang led by Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne) puts those plans in flames.

Can Max vanquish the villains without losing his humanity in the process?

I have never seen this movie before deciding to binge them all - before this, I had only watched Road Warrior and Fury Road. 

Watching all these movies in overview, knowing where it would get with Fury Road, the original trilogy starts to feel like easter egg city. Not in the Marvel sense of plot but in terms of ideas, themes and images.

This movie feels the most like an Ozploitation flick - the sex, violence and weirdness felt a little less thought out and specific than in the later films. Even the way Max’s wife is introduced  - playing a saxophone which has been playing as diegetic music while Max plays with his son - feels more like something out of an exploitation movie.

The more contemporary settings also reinforced the sense that this was a low-budget production. And because of how stripped down it is, it is easier to see Mad Max through the frame of seventies vigilante movies - from the small gang of villains, to Max’s arc is familiar as a good man who is pushed over the edge.

But this movie still lays the foundations - we still get a sense of a world falling apart, and the film avoids falling into over-explaining the world Max lives in.

While most of the cast are familiar Australian actors - I recognised Roger Ward, Max and Goose’s superior, ‘Fifi’, from Turkeyshoot.

Steve Bisley is good as Max’s partner Jim ‘Goose’ Rains - he has good chemistry with Max, and he has a strong enough presence that his horrific fate must have been a real shock when the movie was released.

The late, great Hugh Keays-Byrne is otherworldly as Toecutter. After watching this performance it is easy to see why George Miller would bring him back for Fury Road. A literate sadist with the charisma of a cult leader, Toecutter is a great villain, and Keays-Byrne gives him a diabolical grin and sense of irony - Toecutter always feels like he is in on some sick joke that only he knows the punchline to.

And now to Mad Mel.

Watching the movie felt like watching Mel Gibson become Mel Gibson.

Gibson is a performer built on rage - it was that blaze behind the eyes and his (onscreen) emotional explosions that made and broke him as a movie star. It is such a familiar persona that I found his performance in Mad Max more interesting. He is lowkey throughout the movie and comes across like a voice of reason - his buddy Goose is more passionate. 

It is only when Goose and his family are killed that Gibson’s placid, boyish facade begins to crack.

Mad Max may not have everything we have come to know from the sequels, but it is a great singular movie that works on its own terms.