🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸’s review published on Letterboxd:
As the years have progressed, Mad Max 2 has widely become regarded as a superior film to the original. It's actually, perhaps, not all that fair a comparison - after all, the sequel had about 40 times the budget and, more importantly, had the kid with the killer boomerang.
The original, however, is a fine film in its own right and actually has not dated nearly as much as I was expecting it to have. Mel Gibson is a highway patrolman in a future energy-deprived Australia where gangs are increasingly ruling the roost, who quits the force when his best friend is burnt alive by the gang he attempted to arrest the young prodigy from. Next they turn their attentions on Max and his family.
I've always thought that the promotional descriptions of Mad Max were strange. After all, THE key event in the film that causes Max Rockatansky (I really am considering changing my name legally to Rockatansky - my wife will probably object, but it's almost cool enough to risk divorce over) to become "Mad" happens very near to the end of the film and is surely a twist that the makers would have wanted to have kept largely under wraps?
As such, it's a film that can feel like it is slightly dragging at times as you wait for said event to occur. When the action does arrive, there are some quite spectacular car chases to be seen while Gibson's quiet performance is a nice foil for the manic gangs and their chattering and sometimes deliberately nonsensical dialogue. At times, though, it does feel as though director George Miller is just trying to save some of that miniscule budget with its slower scenes.
It's an effectively tight story, though, even if it's one that doesn't really tell you nearly enough about this future for my liking. The music see-saws between the rousing and downright silly (DUM-DUM-DUMMMMMMMM isn't heard nearly enough in serious films these days, though) and the end chase doesn't live up to the one nearer the start of the film, but does at least contain the delightful visual of Lizzie Birdsworth from Prisoner Cell Block H wielding a shotgun. If Bea Smith had turned up as well then I reckon Max's family might have been alright.
Still very entertaining for the most part but these days it feels more like a warm-up act for the magnificent sequel.