Marval Movie

Mad Max seems to be a film where the ideas and the vision of the filmmakers are greater than what they were capable of portraying and what equipment they had access to at the time. It has this entire world within its head but has limited budget and resources in order to bring that vision into reality.

We open on an unspecified date, all we know is that it is "Some years later" in a landscape out of a western with a few modern touches thrown in, a driver, continuously yelling his name of Knight Rider (Vincent Gil) is blazing across the road. He is on some kind of crazed high and is unrelenting, causing quite a bit of havoc, he continues to storm down the road and through whatever town he passes by. Each police car that tries to stop him are easily beaten, then comes the cop simply known as Max, he's their best and in the battle, the Knight Rider dies.

This seems to take place in a pre-apocalyptic world, where the youths seem to know that the end times are near and have let their inhibitions run wild. But there is still a law system and green trees can still be found. Technology doesn't seem to have progressed by any real means, only that the resources have dwindled.

Max as a character seems to be someone that drives that line between the straight lines of the road and the wild madness just on the edge. A very young Mel Gibson does what he can with the character, he has moments where you can see that he had talent and would go onto become a true movie star.

The humanizing moments are few are fairly far-between. They are inter-cut with the road sequences. The movie follows the rhythm of simply written but effective moments of workplace comradery, touching family pieces, which are then all contrast by the segments on the road that all amounts to whether you can out-race or out-shoot whomever it is that's also there because they probably want to kill you.

This, as the first movie by George Miller, ambitious with more than a few signs of talent. It is always interesting to go back to the very first movie a great filmmaker made. Like Christopher Nolan with The Following, Darren Aronofsky's Pi and David Lynch and Eraserhead. This is the start of a great filmmaker and your still able to see what made them them, even at the start. But for this film as it is, it is still entertaining.

Rating: 3 stars out of 4