t's the near future and, for reasons never made entirely clear, Australian civilization is decaying into anarchy. The only thing keeping the outback nomad gangs away from the remaining pockets of order is the Main Force Patrol. This shoestring police force operates out of what looks like an abandoned factory and keeps the highways open, making up with raw violence what they lack in resources.
The star player for the MFP is Max Rockatansky (Gibson), the coolest, most capable of them all. Max is torn between the adrenaline-laced life guarding the highways with his best friend, Goose (Bisley), and a more normal life with his wife, Jessie (Samuel) and their young son.
Max's two worlds collide with tragic consequences when he and Goose run afoul of a particularly vicious gang led by the Toecutter (Keays-Bearne). And when Goose, Jessie and Max's son are all horribly killed, Max's already tenuous ties to civilization are shattered. Stealing the last of the V-8 Interceptors, Max makes his way into the badlands looking for revenge.
Independently produced for about $200,000, Mad Max was a sensation, launching Mel Gibson on his path toward superstardom. The film grossed more than $100 million worldwide and held the world record for cinematic cost/profit ratios until 1999's The Blair Witch Project took the crown.
When Mad Max was released in the United States, however, it was rather infamously dubbed into "American" English to get rid of the Australian slang and accents. (It's not clear what American viewers were expected to make of the fact that all the cars have their steering wheels on the wrong side.) Thus, the original dialogue track with Mel Gibson's voice had never been heard in the U.S.
That's the primary attraction of this special-edition DVD, which, for the first time, offers American audiences the original version in all its Australian glory. The dubbed version is also available in case viewers really can't handle the accents. (They're not that hard to follow.) The disc also offers both widescreen and pan-and-scan versions of the film, two documentaries, the usual trailers and TV spots, and a trivia track in which text annotations appear in a translucent red bar across the top or bottom of the screen. These cover about a quarter of the screen in the pan-and-scan version, but fit almost entirely into the black area of the letterboxed image.
Mad Max finally finds his voice
Mad Max could probably only have been made when and where it was. Where else but Australia would director George Miller have found a bunch of classically trained Shakespearean actors who do their own motorcycle stunts? Similarly, a filmmaker who tried staging stunts that way today would probably end up in jail.
After 20 years and a pair of hugely expensive sequels, the film does show some of the effects of its shoestring budget. On the other hand, realizing how much of the onscreen mayhem was created by amateur stuntmen actually doing insanely dangerous things raises the adrenaline level considerably. In some ways watching Mad Max is like watching an incredibly dark Jackie Chan movie.
As for the extra features, clearly the big news is the original Australian dialogue track. That alone makes this release mandatory for fans of the movie. The other extras are a mixed bag, worth having but not the sort of thing that would make someone unfamiliar with the film rush out and buy it. The commentary track, featuring three crew members and an Australian film historian, is run of the mill. What the disc claims is the original Australian theatrical trailer apparently isn't—it features the dubbed voices and a Motion Picture Association of America rating banner.
The documentaries cover the film itself and the early career of star Mel Gibson. Both are interesting, especially footage from two other early Gibson films. Ultimately, though, they come off as a little too adoring.
The parallel trivia track, seemingly modeled after VH-1's successful Pop-Up Videos series, is a strange idea but a surprisingly good one. With the benefit of offline research, it offers the kind of details that don't often come up in a live commentary track.
That's not to say the execution couldn't be improved. The track seems to follow the Pop-Up Video model a little too closely, meandering into irrelevance when it has nothing useful to say. Its habit of defining "Aussie" slang words when no one on-screen has actually used them is especially annoying. When it's good, though—identifying vehicles or noting continuity errors—it's very good. Hopefully more discs will offer this feature, particularly as stars are beginning to demand serious money to record commentary tracks and studios begin wondering if DVD extras are worth the trouble.
