“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit.
______________
By Patrick Bartlett (Twitter: @alleywaykrew)
We’re officially into 2020 and a lot of cinephiles have made “best of the decade” lists. I noticed that “Mad Max: Fury Road” was at the top or near the top of most of them. Part of me thought that was pretty cool. Hell, Fury Road was even nominated for “Best Picture” at the Academy Awards. As someone who the Mad Max series is profoundly important to, it’s very cool. However, part of the discussion that’s existed since the release of Fury Road is people declaring it the best Mad Max movie or arguing whether it or “Mad Max 2” (aka “The Road Warrior” here in the U.S.) is the best Mad Max film. To me, that’s all wrong. As far as I’m concerned, the original “Mad Max” is the best of the series and it’s not even close.
As I said, I’m a fan of the whole series. I love Fury Road. I love “The Road Warrior”. Hell, I even love parts of “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome”. I’m in no way trying to impugn those films. Maybe it’s just my sensibilities but nothing is likely to ever touch the original for me. In addition to being a great movie containing some of the best action sequences ever shot, it’s basically a comic book movie before there were really comic book movies (besides Richard Donner’s Superman). It’s a post-apocalyptic movie where the apocalypse literally JUST happened. Max’s world is on one hand a very comic book world and on another, it’s probably not all that dissimilar from what a society that just experienced the apocalypse would actually be like. Everyone is still living their lives as normally as they can but the world around them is just a bit off. In some cases, it’s way off but not nearly as out there as later entries in the series.
Within that not-quite post-apocalyptic world, things have clearly started to go off the rails. You have a small group of, for all we know, the last law enforcement figures on the planet. They take everything in pretty good humor, likely to distract themselves from how thin they’re stretched with groups like the villains in this movie that probably outnumber them two to one. There’s a captain leading this handful of men. He’s obviously meant to be the authority but it’s pretty clear from before we even get that far into the first act that Max Rockatansky (a very young Mel Gibson) is absolutely the guy that everyone looks to when shit hits the fan. They unquestionably made the right choice there. The captain wants to give the world back its heroes and it’s blatantly obvious why he would want Max as the face of that campaign…and not only because he’s the sole officer that seems to be especially good at the job.
To get into that properly though, I need to take a moment to point out how awe-inspiring the opening scene is. You have two other highway cops, a “terminal crazy” villain called the Night Rider and his girlfriend tearing down the road towards a small town that has no clue what’s about to hit it. It’s a race where there will be no winner. It’s at this point that filmmaker George Miller apparently wants to prove who he is and what he can do as a director as soon as possible. I say this because this sequence is legitimately breathtaking to behold. Even taking the context of the time the film was made out of the equation, for a movie that clearly was not made on a huge budget, Miller embarrasses anyone else having made or making car-related action in short order. Everything goes ludicrously fast. Everything gets smashed up real good. You are never at any point confused as to what’s happening. No words I can say can really do it justice. I’ve seen the movie dozens of times and my heart still races whenever I watch it. Anyway, Max takes down the Night Rider and in doing so unknowingly begins the undoing of life as he knows it.
Getting back to Max himself though, it’s made clear in this sequence at the very beginning that Max is the last resort. He can seemingly do anything in a car and is cool as ice. He is the badass of badasses. It’s worth stating that because when they show Max away from work in subsequent scenes, he’s portrayed as kind of a big-hearted, warm, goofball of a guy. Mel Gibson pulls this off perfectly. Say what you want about him as a human being (and it’s probably accurate) but as an actor… especially in this period… he’s just perfect. He drips charisma while also having the chops to play a guy who starts off as I described and tragically ends up as one of the “terminal crazies” he’s spent the movie going after. His arc in “Mad Max” is heartbreaking but it’s part of the reason why I always point to this movie being the best of the series. Everything that happens here leads him down a path to becoming the shell of a human being that you see in the later films.
To explain the circumstances that led him to that end, I need to mention some of the supporting characters. The first of the ones that truly bear mentioning is Goose. Max’s best friend and fellow cop. A true swinging dick of the highest order but clearly a good dude and a good cop. Also, Max is a married man with a wife named Jessi and a baby named Sprog that clearly mean the world to him and vice versa. It’s rare to find a family and marriage in an action movie that feels so real. Neither Max nor Jessi is perfect (his child basically is) but they really seem to be perfect for each other. They’re the support system that allows him to be who he needs to be outside of this happy home. On the other side, there’s Toecutter and his gang. Toecutter is still the scariest villain of the Mad Max series to me. I once heard legendary Batman writer Denny O’Neill describe the Joker as someone who you’re scared of because you have no idea what they’re going to do. He might kill you or he might hand you a hundred dollars. He’ll PROBABLY kill you… but you don’t know for sure and that uncertainty is almost more terrifying. Toecutter has that quality in addition to being a soft-spoken fellow and seemingly a good and caring leader to his men. One could argue he cares too much about someone like Johnny the boy, a rapist and murderer, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s an interesting dichotomy that makes for a great foil for Max. I could go through everyone in the gang but suffice it to say that the entire group is differing levels of crazy and it’s only a matter of time before their world of chaos collides with Max’s world of order. This collision causes life as Max knows it to burn down around him just as the rest of the society has already begun to.
First, Goose is murdered by the gang, which is a punch to the gut for the viewer and Max. It’s what pushes Max to quit being a cop, take his family and try to find a life of peace. The loss of Goose is nothing compared to everything else that happens though. He does not find a life of peace. Max leaves his violent job behind only to have his wife and baby have a chance run-in with Toecutter’s crew that ends with a desperate Jessi, with Sprog in her arms, being rundown by their motorcycles. Jessi is left clinging to life and baby Sprog is dead. Max finally snaps. He quit the force because he knew he’d become one of the terminal crazies and ends up one anyway. He goes after the people responsible for the loss of everything that tethered him to the world to get his revenge. It’s hard to argue that Max is any sort of a hero anymore. I mentioned the comic book world this movie seems to exist in and I feel like in turn it influenced probably the greatest comic in the history of the medium. His final encounter with Johnny the boy was appropriated by “Watchmen” in the decade that followed and while it could be argued that maybe it was just great minds thinking alike, I’m inclined to believe “Watchmen” writer Alan Moore was a fan of “Mad Max”. As well he should be.
Honestly, I can’t really put into words all this film is and what it means to me. When I first got my original DVD-by-mail Netflix subscription, “Mad Max” was one of the movies I had heard referenced all of my life and never seen. I wanted to rectify that. Nothing could have prepared me for it. It’s almost a chicken and the egg situation. Everything about this played to my sensibilities so well that one could surmise that it was what informed them most heavily. It certainly has since. It’s not only one of the best action or sci-fi or car-sploitation films ever made, it’s one of the best films ever made full stop- as far as I’m concerned. Almost nothing even comes close, in my opinion. If you’ve only seen Fury Road or Road Warrior (or Thunderdome for whatever reason), you owe it to yourself to experience this. You may not love it as much as I do but I can’t imagine anyone not liking it.
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch