Pocky-clypse Now Review: Mad Max

Welcome back, Wastelanders!
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For today's review, I'm dipping into one of the genre's greats: George Miller's 1979 proto-action epic, Mad Max.

While it's sometimes overshadowed by its sequels—especially the genre defining masterpiece The Road Warrior--Miller's original film is nonetheless an apocalyptic essential. Telling the focused, intimate story of a family man and police officer serving in the final days of a collapsing society, Miller manages to show us a different side of the apocalypse.

This isn't the rusted hulks and collapsed skyscrapers of the 'Pocky-clypse Past, Wastelanders. This is the impending doom of the 'Pocky-clypse Soon. And its every bit as harrowing as the aftermath.

​Spoilers ahead.
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The Story:

The film opens hot, beginning "a few years from now," with the Australian Main Force Patrol in pursuit of a crazed cop killer calling himself the Nightrider. Vehicles crash, bones break, and glass shatters as the Nightrider outpaces the "Bronze," taunting them the entire way over the police band radio in his stolen V8 Interceptor.

He's set to get away, until Officer Max Rockatansky joins the action, intercepting him along a barren stretch of highway and driving straight for him. The Nightrider, at first cool and collected during the game of chicken, breaks first, swerving around Max in a panic.

Max spins his vehicle around to give pursuit, and a rattled Nightrider ends up plowing his nitro-charged vehicle into a stalled big rig, resulting in an explosion and fireball.

And that, folks, is how you open a fucking movie!

After this blistering, edge-of-the-seat nail biter, we're treated to a series of quieter moments between Max, his wife Jessie, and their toddler son Sprog. It's obvious Max doesn't completely relax at home, however. He's distant and detached as his loving wife tries to engage him. 

The next morning, Max heads in to Main Force Patrol Headquarters, where his partner Jim Goose and the department's mechanic surprise him with a salvaged and rebuilt V8 Interceptor. "The last of the V8's" they call it. Max stares at it with genuine awe, displaying more interest and emotion than he did with his wife the night before.

It's here that we learn, via an upstairs conversation between Captain "Fifi" Macaffee and some department bean counter, that Max has been talking about leaving the force. The rebuilt Interceptor is apparently an expensive bid to keep Fifi's best officer on the job.

Later that night, at the bloody, twisted aftermath of yet another of Max's pursuits, Fifi pulls up to warn him about an ominous rumor. Nightrider apparently has friends, and they're out to get him. Max grins, saying he'll add it to his list of death threats.

He doesn't have long to wait. The next scene is the Toecutter's gang rolling into town to collect their friend's remains from the train station. While Toecutter sits silently by the coffin, the rest of the gang begins to have a little fun with the locals.

This being an apocalyptic biker movie, "fun" involves drinking, laughing, dragging a man to death behind a motorcycle, and running down and raping a young couple in a hot rod.

Some time later, Max and Goose are called to the scene. They find Johnny, one of Toecutter's men, alongside the brutalized girl. Johnny is whacked right out of his skull, and ranting and raving about the Nightrider. They bring him into custody, but the Main Force Officers are forced to release him on a technicality. 

Johnny taunts Goose on the way out the station, and it quickly devolves into an all-out brawl in the parking lot, with other Main Force Officers having to pull Goose away. Johnny manages to get in a chilling last word. 

"We remember the Nightrider, and we know who you are, Bronze."
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True to their word, the bikers locate and tamper with Goose's motorcycle, causing the brakes to lock up and dump him on the side of the highway. He borrows a truck to scoop his bike off the road, and as he's driving back to civilization the bikers ambush him, throwing a rusted brake drum through his windshield and causing him to crash.

What follows is one of the film's most harrowing scenes. 

Goose, trapped and covered in leaking gasoline, looks on helplessly as Johnny and Toecutter stride up. Toecutter instructs Johnny to light a match. Johnny hesitates, saying this isn't what he wanted. But Toecutter tells him this is a threshold moment, that the Bronze are keeping him from being proud. Johnny resists the Toecutter's increasingly frantic demands to throw the match until it physically burns him. He reflexively tosses it into the grass, causing the gas to ignite.

The scene then cuts away to Max arriving at the hospital. The other Main Force officers are gathered in the hall. Everyone tries to keep him out of the intensive care room, but Max goes in anyway. He sees the burned wreck of his partner and friend, and staggers out of the room, sick with shock. He can't accept it. 

"That thing in there," he says. "That's not the Goose."
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The next day, Max walks into Fifi's office and hands in his resignation. Fifi won't hear of it. He tells Max that he's top shelf. He's a winner. And he can't afford to lose him.

This exchange provides one of the series' most memorable lines:

"I'm scared Fifi. Do you know why? It's that rat circus out there. I'm beginning to enjoy it. Any longer out there on that road and I'm one of them, you know? A Terminal Crazy. Only I've got a Bronze Badge to say I'm one of the good guys."

Fifi agrees to give him a few weeks off, saying if he still feels the same way when he gets back, he can resign. Max assures him he won't, but Fifi says Max is hooked and that deep down, he knows it.

The film slows down considerably here, as Max goes off and attempts to enjoy his vacation. Fortunately for the viewer, it doesn't last. Before long the bikers are back, the family dog is dead, and Max is out hunting the bikers with a shotgun while his terrified wife huddles in the farmhouse with the elderly landlady.

Unfortunately, this is just what the bikers wanted. With Max running around in the woods, the bikers swoop in and get their hands on Sprog, leading to a tense and terrifying confrontation. It's only the fortunate arrival of the landlady and her shotgun that keeps the worst from happening, but even that turns out to be nothing but a short-term delay.

As the two women make their escape, the car fails, forcing Jessie to take Sprog and run. 
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It ends about as well as you'd imagine.
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It's at this point Max finally caves. He dons his leathers, steals the V8 Interceptor from the Halls of Justice and sets out on the highway. The rest of the movie is exactly what we signed on for: a practically non-stop rampage of balls-out, high-octane violence and revenge.

We're treated to spectacular set pieces of Max stalking the bikers, running them down with his nitro V8, and shotgunning his way out of the bikers' attempted trap. Soon the only survivors are Johnny and Toecutter, who opt to break and run in opposite directions. Max gives chase, opting to follow Toecutter. 
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What follows is another edge of the seat, nail-biting chase sequence, and one of the film's absolute highlights. 

Max doggedly pursues him, catching up inch by inch. The Toecutter, panicked, keeps looking behind him. He doesn't see the oncoming semi truck until the very last second, just long enough to register a moment of terror. Then the truck crushes him, rolling over his broken body even as the driver tries to stop.

The following morning, Max finally catches up to Johnny at the scene of yet another vehicle wreck. He cuffs the pleading biker's leg to the wreck at gunpoint. He then lights Johnny's zippo lighter and places it beneath the leaking gas tank. Handing Johnny a hacksaw, he says it will take him ten minutes to hack through the chain on the handcuffs. But if he's lucky, he can cut through his ankle in five.

He then leaves the begging, screaming Johnny to his own devices and drives out into the wastes. The film closes on Max's dead, icy expression as the wreck explodes into a huge fireball behind him.


The Vitals:


Violence - Mad Max delivers here. Arguably more than any other film in the series. The individual scenes may not be as elaborately staged as those in the later movies, and there certainly aren't as many of them. But the ones we have are brutally effective and powerful. 

Special mention has to go to the standout opening chase scene, which—40 years later—is still one of the greatest ever put to film. Even in the three subsequent Mad Max films, George Miller himself never quite topped it. It may not have the flash or the scope of the chase scenes in The Road Warrior or Fury Road. But in terms of nail-biting tension, stakes, and raw grittiness, it remains the series' high point.

Other highlights include the gang savagely running down Jessie and Sprog, the horrifying ambush and immolation of Jim Goose, and Max's violent rampage for the last ten minutes of the movie, culminating in his poetically appropriate torching of Johnny.  

Man's Civilization Cast in Ruins - No ruins, but that's mainly because the world George Miller shows us in Mad Max isn't quite apocalyptic. Not yet. Rather, it's a world that's rapidly heading towards apocalypse, in the throes of economic depression, fuel shortages, and a general breakdown of order.

That said, the dilapidated Halls of Justice building, the general squalor of the city, and the occasional pile of wreckage alongside the highway do an admirable job of portraying a society going to rot.

Dystopian Survivor Society - In spades. Whatever body is governing the city is rapidly turning into a dictatorship, as they struggle to keep some stability and order in a world going to shit. There are distinctly Orwellian overtones to the radio dispatcher's messages throughout the movie. Furthermore, aside from some stand-up types like Goose, Fifi, and Max, the Main Force Patrol is made up of violent thugs no different from the gangs. 

It's subtle by genre standards, but arguably all the more powerful for it.

Futuristic Bloodsports - None whatsoever. While the series would eventually go on to become synonymous with the most famous futuristic bloodsport this side of Rollerball, the first Mad Max is basically a near-future police drama. 

And as cool as it would have been to see, a rousing game of Machete Rugby would have detracted from the story. 

Barbarian Hordes - Scoot jockeys. Nomad trash. Whatever you want to call them, Toecutter's biker gang fits the bill. Right from the moment they ride into town they're seen raping, raiding, and looting everything in sight. 

While they're a bit tame compared to some of the series' later villains, what really makes them effective is their audacity. They're not out there in the wastes preying on one another. They're riding up main street, preying on the film's stand-ins for the audience.

Lord Humungous might be the Warrior of the Wasteland, but Toecutter leads the barbarians at the gates. For a society trying to hold onto its last threads of civilization, that's far more terrifying. 

Badass Warrior Women - Jessie spends a little too much time playing damsel in distress, but the film doesn't leave us hanging. I present the sweet, elderly landlady, May Swaisey. 

Yes, really. 

May faces down over half a dozen bikers with nothing but a double barreled shotgun, showing all the grit of an Old West Marshal. After she fires off her warning shot, she knows damned well she's just got just one load of buckshot left before they can dog pile her. She still doesn't show the slightest bit of fear or hesitation. Rather, she menaces the bikers with her remaining shot, daring each of them to be the one that eats it as she corrals them into the barn.

I say this in all sincerity. Do NOT fuck with a grandma holding a shotgun. She's not playing games. Mess around, and she will end you.

Watch Thou For the Mutant - The Mad Max series has always been pretty lacking in this department, and Mad Max has the weakest showing of all. Not one mutant or abnormal creature shows up for the entire run time.



The Commentary:

Its no accident that one of the very first shots in the film is the broken, run-down Hall of Justice. With just that one visual, Miller manages to convey a lot of background information to the viewer. We don't need a long narration over stock footage, or a silent title card explaining how the world got this way. That one shot tells us all we need to know, that we're in a world that's just barely holding on before the final slip into anarchy. It's elegantly simple, and one of the best examples of purely visual storytelling I can think of. 

Likewise, the entire opening sequence does an incredible amount of heavy lifting, introducing not just the story world and several main characters, but effectively showing us who Max and Jim Goose are. Within minutes of the film's opening crawl, we know Goose is an easygoing joker, while Max is already teetering dangerously on the edge. And it manages to do this while simultaneously delivering a thrilling chase scene.  

Arguably, that relationship between Goose and Max is the movie's most important one. Jim Goose has all the humanity and humor Max seems to be lacking. That said, he's not a one-note character. The most telling moment for Goose is his outburst in the Halls of Justice, as the Main Force patrol is forced to release Johnny. 

The fact that no one showed for the hearing (not even Max) is what finally cracks Goose's cool, easygoing exterior. The Justice System is what he truly believes in, we realize. It's the one thing enabling him to put on that jolly, relaxed demeanor every day. Watching it collapse and fail before his very eyes is more than he can stand. The world—the real, failing world, the one out there in the Wastes—has suddenly become too real, too impossible to hide from. The mask slips, and for a brutally savage moment in the parking lot, Goose is no different than the bikers, pinning and beating Johnny until he's physically dragged away.

And it's Jim Goose's burning that provides Max's first and most important crisis moment. One that oddly mirrors that of another character in the film, biker and simpering Toecutter toady, Johnny.

Toecutter has a meaningful line in the previous scene, as the two bikers are standing over the helpless Goose. Toecutter tells Johnny he's at a threshold moment, and urges him to step through it by lighting the gasoline. Johnny, of course, hesitates, and it's unclear as to how willingly he tosses the match at the end.

Seeing Goose's burned body is Max's threshold moment. And like Johnny, he doesn't want to step through. He even tells Fifi he's going to quit the Main Force, over fear of becoming "one of them, a terminal crazy." 

The main difference is that Max is partially successful in stepping away from that threshold. He still has some tiny bit of humanity left, something to hold onto. It's only after he loses his son and his wife is brutally injured that he crosses it, but when he does it's a much more deliberate and willing action than Johnny's.

This point is hammered home in the film's nihilistic final shot. Max simply drives out into the wasteland, not bothering to go back and check on his hospitalized wife. She, like the majority of humanity, will be dead soon. 

And Max Rockatansky no longer cares.
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​The Rad Rating:

Mad Max can be forgiven for lacking some of the genre's Vitals. After all, the series is still in its embryonic stage at this point, and subsequent films will arguably go on to create or codify several of the items on the list. Nevertheless, where it lacks in one area it dramatically pays off in the others. The dearth of Mutants and Futuristic Bloodsports is more than balanced out by the Violence and the Dystopian Survivor Society. 

The film's only real weaknesses occur in the sagging middle portion, where Max attempts to have a quiet vacation with Jessie. Several of the scenes here run overlong, and the plot sort of meanders a bit. There are also a few nonsensical character moments, the most jarring of which involves both Max and Jessie forgetting all about their son while the bikers are stalking them at the farmhouse.

However, these flaws are only occasionally glaring, and there are few enough of them on display to keep this film comfortably in the Four Rads category. Highly recommended.

Until next time, Wastelanders.