The Analysis Of

An Analysis of Mad Max

"Mad Max" is an Australian flick directed by George Miller and starring by Mel Gibson as Mad Rockatansky a.k.a Mad Max, Joanne Samuel as Jessie rockatansky (Max's wife,) Hugh Keays Byrne as Toecutter and Steve Bisley as Jim Goose. We can say this is the film that rocketed and made a star of Mel Gibson.

The movie begins with a great action sequence. A maniac who calls himself the Nightrider (Vincent Gil) has killed a cop and stolen a souped-up police interceptor, and the movie opens with the police desperately trying to stop him before he drives into inhabited areas. The police are hardly model citizens themselves. The first cop we see is spying on a naked couple through a rifle scope. And the standard operating procedure for ending car chases in this world is some combination of shotgun blasts and ramming. (Maybe they should have tried that with OJ when he went on the lam.) Unfortunately, the first cops on the scene end up crashing their cars spectacularly rather than stopping the Nightrider, so they call on Max (Mel Gibson). Then Max arrives on the scene. In his own special vehicle, the yellow Interceptor, he chases and catches Nightrider, which results in a crash killing Nightrider.

Through the time after the first scene, we learn a little of Max's homelife. Away from the road he is a normal guy with a wife and a kid. There is a scene that show Max watching his wife (Jessie, played by Joanne Samuel) plays the sax, while in the background a news story about the death of the Nightrider is on TV. Frankly, these home scenes (we get more later) never really work. The idea, of course, is to show Max is a normal man, and to demonstrate his attachment to his wife. But it feels like filler. I don't think we ever really get a sense of the connection between the two. Their conversations don't seem like those a married couple would have; they are more like conversations two unrelated people might make up if they were trying to convince the INS they were really married. In part, the problem is that the movie is deliberately trying to play up the disconnect between Max's normal home life and his mad existence on the roads. But it is too forced. Everyday Max goes on the roads and kills people (bad guys to be sure, but still). And then suddenly he's at home, Mr. Family Man, telling sappy stories about taking walks with his dad? The world is falling apart on the outside, and the home scenes come of as delusional rather than normal.

Luckily, the movie soon shifts back into an action realm. The Nightrider's gang rides into a small town to pick up his remains. The gang is led by the Toecutter, who is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne as sort of a cross between Charles Manson and Joan Crawford. He wears eyeshadow for crying out loud. Toecutter's gang is reminiscent of the gang of outlaws that rides into town in westerns. They would also fit in fine in any number of biker movies. Despite their somber task, the gang has time to terrorize the town... well, that and prance around a lot. Not to be politically incorrect or anything, but in both Mad Max and its sequel, the Road Warrior, a lot of the outlaw bikers seem a little, um, light in the loafers, if you know what I mean. Combined with the leather clad cops, you don't have to be Quentin Tarentino to spot a homoerotic subtext here. In a later scene, the cops have one of the bad guys all trussed up in chains, and the police chief's (Fifi, played by Roger Ward) outfit at another point would allow him to be a lead character in a BDSM porno. Anyway, I'm not quite sure what to make of all that, but there is definitely something going on here.

Among the people watching the gang's antics is a young couple. At first, they're just having fun watching, but when the gang's activities turn more violent, including dragging one poor sap down the main street from the back of a motorcycle, they decide to skedaddle. This is a good idea, but executed badly in this case. As they pull out, they nearly run over Toecutter, who sets out after them down the road. The bikers catch the car quickly, and run it off the road. They quickly attack the car, smashing windows, puncturing the roof, and tearing apart the engine. The whole scene is just a series of quick cuts, but blended together gives the impression of a violent assault. The scene with the young couple being pulled out of the window of the car and surrounded by gang members.

Max and his friend Goose (Steve Bisley) are dispatched to the scene, where we see the aftermath of destruction. The male of the couple is spotted running away from the scene, and the woman is wrapped in rags with a rope around her neck. Both have obviously been brutally raped. Also at the scene is one of the bikers (Johnny the Boy, played by Tim Burns), too stoned out of his gourd to ride away. Though arrested, Johnny the Boy is soon released because no one shows up in court to press charges. Goose goes nuts and tries to kill Johnny right there, but Max and the others restrain him. This scene provides a not-too-subtle dig at the legal process, but also makes clear that no matter how much disorder seems to rule, a functioning legal system exists. The nature of this legal system is more than a little unclear. Apparently, there are courts and lawyers, but at the same time, the inside of the police HQ looks like an abandoned warehouse. The scene ends with Goose and Johnny exchanging threats, and the police captain letting his men know that at least on the roads, if not in court, anything goes.

Unfortunately for Goose, the gang gets to him first. While he is at a nightclub, they tamper with his bike. The next day on the road, Goose's wheels suddenly lock up and he is pitched through the air, landing hard. Amazingly, he gets up and walks away, but after borrowing a truck to transport his bike, Goose is attacked by the gang. They throw a wheel through his windshield, and when the truck tumbles off the road it traps Goose inside as fuel leaks from the gas tank. Goose isn't killed though, but he might as well be. The sight of his charred friend in the hospital is too much for Max, who storms away and makes up his mind to quit the force. The captain tried to convince him otherwise, and suggests he take a few weeks off. Max is still determined to quit, but he agrees.

We next see Max, Jessie, and their son Sprog (?), loaded into a van and driving out into the countryside. Everything is going well, until Max stops at a junkyard/auto shop to get a tired fixed. While the mechanic is fixing the spare, Jessie goes off with Sprog to find some ice cream. By coincidence, Toecutter's gang is camping by the store, and they begin to harass Jessie.