Mad Max (1979)

Mad Max would be forgotten film without sequel Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. It has similar themes as sequel has but pieces don't fall in to their places. It almost feels like demo for the sequel.

Movie makes same mistake as The Colony. It doesn't explain the premise. It just tells this happens in near future. With Mad Max problem is not that big since not that much have changed compared to current time. It is easy to see that society is collapsing. Reason for that would have been nice to know. It was told in Mad Max 2 which also tells everything about this movie you need to know to enjoy that movie.

Mad Max tells about future police Max and his problems with biker-gang. Everything is collapsing but some people are trying to keep civilization working. How ever there are too few of them and too many of those who want to take advantage of the situation. Police is almost like criminals they hunt. They just happen to be other side and not doing crimes against civilians. On the road everything seem to be fair game. It is not an issue if criminal dies during the chase.

Mad Max is better to watch out of curiosity than expecting to see a good movie. It not good or bad. It is quite uninspiring. George Miller is still learning movie making and writing. He mastered both in second movie. He also had better cast in sequel. Mel Gibson is only one from this movie in sequel and he is much better in sequel. It felt like most actors were amateurs. To be fair the script wasn't best either.

Mad Max felt like it was out of phase. For example Max wanting to leave police was told in odd order. First nothing indicated he wanted to leave. Then he was shown a new car but it wasn't given to him at any point. Right after this his boss tells someone they bought the car to keep Max in police. Later after one police is hurt Max tells he wants to leave police. But before that nothing but that one weird conversation indicated he wanted to leave.

This was not only story arc that felt like there was too much into it or something was missing from it. Everything could have been easily fixed by cutting of couple scenes, shooting couple scenes explaining certain things and putting scenes in different order. Now that I think of it this is quite like The Colony. Both had similar problems. Addition to The Colony this had some over-acting.

I don't know what this felt 1979. Now after we have seen Mad Max 2 this feels bit uninspiring. Some of this feeling may come from the fact that I am not biggest fan of gritty 70's action movies but I am a fan of the sequel. You might like this more if you like gritty 70's action movies.