Amazon.com video review:
The Road Warrior is already a classic, sans condescending genre
distinctions like "sci-fi" or "action." But the story of Mel Gibson's
stately antihero begins in Mad Max, George Miller's low-budget debut
in which Max is a "Bronze" (cop) in an unspecified postapocalyptic future with
a buddy-partner and family. But unlike most films set in the devastated
future, Mad Max is especially notable because it is poised between
our industrialized world and total regression to medieval conditions. The
scale tips towards disintegration when the Glory Riders burn into town on
their bikes like an overamped cadre of Brando's Wild Ones.
Representing the active chaos that will eventually overwhelm the dying
vestiges of civil society, they take everything dear to Max, who will exact
due revenge. His flight into the same wilds that created the villains
artfully sets up the morally ambiguous character of the subsequent
films. --Alan E. Rapp
