1979
Written and Directed by George Miller
Starring Mel Gibson
In these hallowed days of disgust, as Mel Gibson gets in line with R. Kelly, Michael Jackson and Gunter Grass as artists who have failed to toe the line as decent human beings, it will be easy to slight their respective works as mere reflections of their obscene personal failings. Still, as any normal man will tell you, one has to return to Thriller eventually--MJ may be a disgusting pedophile (by "may" we mean "is")--but taking that out on all those adorable tiger cubs and Billie Jean just shows a lack of maturity. So we here at the Factual are willing to wait for you to return from your well-earned opportunity ridiculing Mr. Gibson, for we have a film you should watch.
Mad Max is the least well-remembered of the three "Max" films, falling further into memory than the Master Blaster and Tina Turner of Thunderdome or the sheer perfection that is Road Warrior--Mad Max, in all honesty, isn't as good as either of those films, one of which isn't even that good. Max is both incredibly sentimental and cynical at the same time, jumping from scenes of horrible dialog to incredibly intense car accidents, mixed with a veritable Molotov cocktail of homegrown gang violence--the movie is so devoid of any real characters or any sort of real acting that Mel Gibson's performance is more impressive because it didn't ruin his career, much less because Max is the film that started it. So why did it succeed--and it did, heroically earning a massive profit? The easiest way is to watch it--and in watching it, you'll see why: because Mad Max gave a generation of viewers (well, male viewers at least) what they all wanted, but didn't know how to ask for--automobile pornography. Nothing in Mad Max holds up anymore, nothing human at least: but those cars, those cars! From the psychopathic version of chicken that results in broken humanity that opens the film until the sociopathic speeding that Max engages in while cruising for vengeance that ends the film, the viewer is bombarded, pumped and assaulted with every different form of fast cars, chases and engines so that the climax of the film, with it's explosion-as-backdrop, serves also as the climax of the viewers relationship with Max's car. By the close, we're back where we've started, looking at a vehicle we'd all like to have--only now even more so, because we've seen what that baby can do.
The Mad Max franchise went on to greater moments in film with it's next installment The Road Warrior, before dwindling to Thunderdome, a film that is memorable only because it's a treasure trove of pop cultural oddity, but neither film, nor any other one since, have been willing to showcase cars so sexually and prominently--that is, unless one counts the dull rubberized nature of the Fast and Furious franchise, which is reminiscent of what Max might be like if he couldn't have grown facial hair, and he wrapped his "last of the great Interceptors" in a giant condom. Max isn't a movie for everyone--it's just a great movie for people who like to go fast. The rest can hop on board a Lincoln with Dan Akyrod and Jessica Tandy--rumor has it that Morgan Freeman knows about a new Dairy Queen.
one of the most challenging things in the world is to write a thought provoking review of "mad max"..you almost did.
Posted by: andre | 2006.09.22 at 23:06