Mad Max/Review

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Imagine a world in which laws are meaningless and oil supplies have nearly run out. It would be a hard time to live and survive. In fact, I think that world will be our planet in the next few years. We have news about violent crimes and the destruction of natural resources every day. There's a film that predicts the future pretty well. It's one of the most well-known Ozploitation films of all time and starred a then-unknown Mel Gibson. Yes, it's Mad Max!

The plot is similar to every Vigilante movie you've heard of before. A policeman named Max has to fight an evil gang. Then the gang kill his best friend, his wife and his baby so Max takes his revenge on them. Believe it or not, this is not the basic premise, this synopsis covers 85% of the whole film! This storytelling technique makes the movie even more realistic because we can see how Max is slowly driven mad by the biker gang.

This film looks very good although it was shot on a very low budget but you know what? This is the main reason I think this film is the best one in the franchise. Many people say that The Road Warrior is the best, but I don't think so. To me, the original Mad Max captures the hopelessness and chaos in the dystopian society A LOT better. The location of this film is a small town where people still live and the cops have to choose between "staying within the ineffective law or breaking it to fight crime" which looks like the world we live in nowadays. Nobody wants to be a hero or be killed, we just stay out of problems as much as possible until they hit you in the face. And when problems hit you in the face, are you going to hide or stand up and fight like Max?

Another thing I'd like to point out about this film is the US trailer. Since nobody had heard of Mel Gibson before, the editing and sounds are used to get the audience's interest. There's a narrator who talks about the future depicted along with text on the screen that repeats what he says. The soundtrack is, to be honest, one of the most kick-ass trailer scores I've ever heard. It's like a John Carpenter score for a slasher movie but works very well in the future dystopia setting. Unfortunately, this song is nowhere to be heard in the actual film since it was created only for the US trailer. Also, the editing is quick-cut images of many scenes in the film to make audiences curious to know the real premise.

While a third sequel is coming soon (Mad Max: Fury Road), I encourage you to watch the original Mad Max. It's dark, it's raw, it's violent, and it looks real. Who knows? in the not too distance future, your fate might end up like Max's!

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Nuttawut Permpithak hails from Thailand. He spends his free time watching exploitation films (or any films from the past) writing articles, taking photos and reviewing films for GCDb.