"Mad Max" is an Australian movie from over 35 years ago and it was the big breakthrough for Mel Gibson, here in his early 20s. The multi talented artist that becomes 60 next year has starred in an uncountable number of films since then, won many awards, including 2 Oscars for "Braveheart", and was among Hollywood's biggest names until his demise a while ago. Gibson is probably among the biggest Australians in film history, just like Mad Max is one of the most known Australian films. The writer and director is George Miller and he has a pretty unique body of work. Mad Max is maybe his most known work, but if not, then it would be the animated penguin movie "Happy Feet", for which he also won an Academy Award. Miller turned 70 this year, so he was in his mid-30s when he made "Mad Max" and just this year, he returned to the franchise and made a really successful (with audiences and critics) new installment called "Fury Road". The title character is not played by Gibson anymore, but instead Tom Hardy took over. At least Gibson played him in the 2 sequels back in the 1980s.

But back to this movie here: It is not very long, only 90 minutes without credits and has Gibson play a police officer in a world run by crime and vicious motorbike gangs. One of these is lead by the mysterious Toecutter and he is also the main antagonist in the movie. They keep committing crimes all the time, rob people, murder other people, rape women etc. Ruthless criminals. Things get personal quickly. When a fellow police officer who tried to arrest them is almost killed and mutilated for life by the gang, Max decides to retire from the force before his anger drives him either mad or makes him a criminal as well. But the suffering isn't over as the next targets of the gang are Max' girl and their child. This is too much for him and his bloody, ruthless revenge cannot be stopped anymore and in the last 15 minutes, he really unleashes on the bad guys. No mercy. All in all, a pretty good atmospheric movie with no real moments of greatness nonetheless. Still, I recommend it and it got me motivated to watch the sequels soon perhaps and also the new movie. Thumbs up.