Set
a near apocalyptic (then post apocalyptic from the second movie on)
story in Australia, add a dash of 'Wacky Races', and you get 'Mad
Max'.
It's
not particularly clever or funny, but it's definitely what it is.
Shotguns, vehicles, and graphic explosions are this series' bread and
butter.
We
come out a little slow with the first one though. The budget for this
movie was miniscule $350k, and it shows despite the excellent action
direction.
The
spikes and skulls style of ornamentation in the later movies isn't
present here, but we do get some nicely beaten up vehicles and a
couple good chases. "Good" might be an understatement. This series has some of the best car chases in cinematic history, and this film has done amazingly well with what it could afford. Chases are really what this series does best, as we'll see in the
next movie. I don't tend to care so much for characterisation in this series beyond how cool they look, and the evil gang in this one are also somewhat underplayed
compared to the total mentalists in the other ones, which I found
myself looking forward too.
This
is a great film though, just not the strongest of the series. His
wife/girlfriend is a good sympathetic character, they had some chemistry and a few nice scenes together without it getting boring, and it was a real
bummer when she died (though that whole plot line was an awfully slow
burner, when contrasted with the speed at which the film was wrapped
up afterwards). Mainly though I just can't wait to re-watch the next one.
Mad Max: 66.2