Mad Max (1979)
★★★½ — Mad Max (1979)
Let's get the most important thing out of the way first: the car is absolutely brilliant. That black, supercharged Pursuit Special is one of the great vehicles in cinema history, and honestly, part of me wishes the whole film had just been an extended advert for it. I'd have watched that happily.
Mad Max is one of those films you feel like you have to watch. It's part of the canon. People talk about it with reverence. And it's fine, genuinely, but I'll be honest with you: it's not quite the film the reputation promises. There's something a little rough and uneven about it that keeps it from being the stone-cold classic some folk make it out to be.
The biggest issue, for me, is that it can't quite commit to what it wants to be. It's sold as a post-apocalyptic road movie, but the world still feels relatively civilised. There are police forces, courtrooms, roads in reasonable nick. The collapse of society feels more like a mild inconvenience than a full breakdown. That ambiguity isn't really used to any interesting effect either. It just sort of sits there, making you wonder exactly where and when all this is supposed to be happening.
What saves it, considerably, is the villain. Toecutter is genuinely unsettling. There's a real sinister quality to him, the kind of screen presence that makes you sit up a bit straighter whenever he appears. He's unpredictable and threatening in a way that the film around him sometimes isn't, and he deserved to be in a tighter, meaner picture than this one. When he's on screen, you believe in the danger. When he's not, things can drag a bit.
The violence and the practical effects hold up pretty well, especially when you consider what they were working with. There's a scrappiness to the action that gives it energy, and a couple of the crash sequences are genuinely impressive. The music, too, is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It's got a propulsive, strange quality that pushes the film forward even when the pacing threatens to stall.
Mel Gibson is fine. Young, lean, doing the brooding thing. But the film takes a while to really give him something to do, and when the emotional stakes arrive, they land with less impact than they should. You feel like you're supposed to be devastated by certain turns in the story, but the script hasn't quite done the groundwork to earn that.
Three stars. It's worth your time, especially if you're planning to work through the series. But if you're coming to it expecting a fully formed classic, temper those expectations a touch. Because Mad Max 2 is where this world genuinely clicks into something special. The first film often feels like a rough draft of that one, an interesting, occasionally thrilling rough draft, but a rough draft all the same. Watch this, enjoy the car, enjoy Toecutter, and then get straight onto the sequel.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 1979 | Watched: 2025-05-03
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · Sky Go · Now TV Cinema · HBO Max
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Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
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