Mad Max
Director: George Miller
Writer: George Miller, James McCausland
Cast: Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Steve Bisley, Tim Burns, Roger Ward
Seen on: 15.5.2015

Plot:
Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) is part of what remains of the police force, mostly busy with hunting down gang violence. After the gang led by Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne) kills his partner Jim Goose (Steve Bisley), Max decides that he has to get out of there. So he packs his wife Jessie (Joanne Samuel) and their little kid and they try to get away from their routines. But Toecutter, his gang and the violence they bring are not that easily left behind.

I loved pretty much everything about Mad Max, in particular the way the movie methodically dismantles all the “lone wolf”-cop clichés. Even though that meant that the film ends on one of hell of a sad note.

[SPOILERS]

Max is introduced like the quintessential hero cop: dressed all in black and leather, he drives alone where everybody else drives in pars, his car has another job description than the others, he is calm where everybody else is excited. In very few strokes this image gets build up, of Max as a cool hero like we’ve seen many times before, heightened by the fact that it takes a while until we actually get to see his face.

Then we see his face – and he is incredibly young and pretty baby-faced. Then we realize that he has a partner he likes to work with. We see that he has a family – a family with whom he is warm, emotional, vulnerable, accessible and caring, even when that isn’t always easy for him. Max talks about being afraid to become one of the bad guys and gets the fuck out before that can happen – or tries to. Bit by bit, that cold hero image from the beginning is dismantled and turned on its head and Max becomes even better for it.

And then his life is ripped apart when the Toecutter kills Jessie and his kid (in one of the most forgivable instances of fridging I have ever seen – because Jessie continuously puts up a fight and because that happens surprisingly late into the film). And not only his life gets destroyed, Max himself doesn’t actually survive it. Instead of his wife’s death being the starting point for Max becoming a superhuman hero who obliterates the bad guys and thus makes the world a better place again, Jessie’s death is the beginning of the end of Max the warm man who tries to do right by everyone – a transformation that is completed at the end of the film, when Max has successfully destroyed the gang and its members and there is still no justice or satisfaction, there is just sadness and emptiness where before was love and a complete human being.

With a story like that you got me, even if I don’t care very much for car chases and even though the sound mixing wasn’t very good, leaving the dialogues too low and the motors way too loud. Those are just minor details in a fantastic piece of cinema and story telling.

Summarizing: Loved it.