Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Mad Max / Australia / 1979

Why AMC bills this film as a drama I’ll never know. It’s Mad Max for god’s sake. It’s action. It’s sci-fi. It’s horror. It’s post-apocalyptic. But drama? I suppose some of the touching scenes between Max and his wife Jessie might momentarily fit the label, but I can guarantee that no one settles in for an evening of Mad Max to be swept up in an engaging human tale. We watch for explosions, severed limbs, fast cars, and Mel Gibson at his revenge-fueled finest.

At the beginning, Max Rockatansky is the celebrated driver of a police car called the Interceptor; a man who spends his life on the semi-lawless Australian highways attempting to track down all wrong doers. It is a post-apocalypitc world in which much of civilization has eroded, leaving folks with nothing much to do but drive around, look for gas, and cause trouble. At first, Max likes his work, but when his partner is mutilated by a band of thugs, he wants to call it quits and take care of his wife. Sadly, the thugs know about Max and set about to destroy his happiness. Once that is accomplished, Max gets Mad and seeks revenge.

While its overarching plot structure is thus easy enough to understand, the underlying aspects of the Mad Max story are quite mysterious, due in large part to the film’s use of thick Australian accents and roughly cut scenes that jump one to the next. We are offered hints as to the complex details of this future world, but nothing is entirely spelled out for us. The result is a film that never gets bogged down in details and allows viewers to become a part of its universe with little effort. We understand what’s going on, not by listening closely, but by sitting back and watching the action unfold. Add to this a wonderfully bleak landscape, and an atmosphere of perpetual restlessness and danger, and you have an engrossing movie world that feels entirely real and possible.

by Thomas Scalzo | Source: AMC Broadcast
21 Jun 2005 11:27 AM | Submit Comment