Mad Max

Saw Mad Max, a defacto sci-fi film set in "the near future" which is essentially now. It follows the adventures of near-future cops vs near-future motorcycle hooligans. It's a frustrating film in some ways. You know everything's building toward a climactic showdown, but the film endlessly delays this showdown. It tries to frame the event as a sort of Straw Dogs-esque compromise of moral integrity, but I at least just wished the film would get to the shoot-out already. Perhaps this indicts me as well in the moral compromise? I think the film would like to think so.

Made in the '70s, the film unfortunately labours under the delusion that effeminate men are terrifying. Many of the bad guys wear eyeliner and during the climax the main antagonist hisses like a cat. Adorable. It also believes that tight leather cop-uniforms make the wearer look bad-ass (when in fact it only makes them look hot-ass.) It comes off as a bit homoerotic sometimes, but honestly I think the '70s in general was just kind of like that. Weird vibes everywhere in any case.

This film didn't really grab me. I was distracted throughout (and may well have missed the point.) I was expecting action-film macho posturing and grizzled performances and instead got endless shots of car fetishism broken up by scenes of Max hanging out with his wife. Like I say, the film seems mainly preoccupied with the moral compromise of its hero and while that might be an interesting angle, I've seen it played out before and was disappointed that I didn't get the brainless action film I was all set for. I suspect also that this film may have been a victim of its success. Morally ambiguous heroes are no longer unusual creatures. The showdown is perhaps delayed only because the filmmakers didn't realize that it was the carrot to their moralizing stick. It may be that this film broke the mould and subsequent films refined its advances. This doesn't help me retroactively enjoy it any more, unfortunately, but it does redeem the film a bit. It came off as a muddle of a film for me but, as ever, your mileage may vary.