lördag 5 december 2015

THIS STUFF WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT THE FILM NICE GUYS, BUT WENT STRAIGHT TO HELL INSTEAD!

This was going to be a post about Shane Blacks newest film Nice Guys starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling. But it´s not. It made me think about Blacks first picture he wrote, The all-time classic Lethal Weapon ( directed by Richard Donner)´ His original idea was as a sort of deconstruction of Dirty Harry where the same type of character, the cop on the edge were a lot more psychologically scarred from the death of his wife . In  Dirty Harry, the death of Harry´s wife is just treated as something .....that happened. Harry seem pretty callous about it, Shut off. Like a real man should deal with it. Or the traditional way a man handles his emotions. Locking it up. Taking it like a man!

But then came the 80´s and men were supposed to be more in touch with their emotionals and their feels and all that shit and wear pink shirts all the time.  In fact there is a scene in Lethal Weapon that sums it up:

Sergeant McCaskey: You know, Roger, you are way behind the times. The guys of the 80s aren't tough. They are sensitive people. Show a little emotion to a woman and shit like that. I think I'm an '80s man...
Roger Murtaugh: How do you figure?
Sergeant McCaskey: Last night I cried in bed. So how is that?
Roger Murtaugh: Were you with a woman?
Sergeant McCaskey: I was alone. Why do you think I cried?
Roger Murtaugh: Sounds like an '80s man to me...

Martin Riggs is the new 80´s man. Burned out, alone, suicidal and more intense than any action hero at the time. Because a normal human being can´t just shut off the death of a loved one. Even if he is a real man! He needs a hug and good cry. There is no hugging in this one, but there is a great intense scene in which Riggs come close killing himself in his trailer, alone on Christmas Eve.

Which may be the reason it was so successful. Oh, shit! here is a macho guy who shows his emotions in an unusually raw way. What the hell is this all of a sudden? And then John McClane came along in Die Hard and followed that trend. A few years back Michael Biehn from The Terminator also allowed himself to be vulnerable in some tender moments with Sarah Connor. And not to mention when he is blown to bits, leaving the female character in charge. There are plenty of examples.

But, wait? Weren´t the 80´s extremely macho? Well, yes in a way.  Whenever there is a dominating discourse, it is usually ounterparted with a reaction towards it. At least it is something I have read somewhere. And it is called counter culture. As an example,  here in Europe you  could argue that the multicultural discourse has been countered with an increasing right wing extremism. Not everyone is happy about it.

So the demands of men behaving sensitive is countered with this ridiculously macho-as-hell movies of the 80´s. Or maybe the sensitivity was a reaction towards it, I don´t know. What is clear is that we can see contrasting ideals among male heroes in the 80´s.   I mean, stuff like Commando, Cobra,Action Jackson, Predator, not to mention the the Rambo-films has this´absurd, invincible ubermensch alpha male in the lead.

What was a counter reaction to what is for better men than me to observe. Or maybe I should read more, so I can learn shit? Whatever...

I am not a scholar on this, but I do believe that it is hard to define eras out of one particular line of thinking. There are alwasy discrepancies and disagreements from various cultural groups with different thinking. But it is always interesting to discover these contradictions and cultural disagreements in popular culture.

Any way? Lethal Weapon? Great fucking movie,

onsdag 2 december 2015

OH NO,ELMORE! WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU? PART 2 KILLSHOT: A SHOT IN THE DARK

A  visual  intepretation of the movie I saw. Don´t expect more
Killshot is one of my favourite books by Elmore Leonard. But when I saw the movie adaptation, it made me question how I could love such a basic plot. Again like in Part 1 it all comes down to how the filmmakers adapt the work. Admittedly, there were some really good ideas in Stick.  I liked how visual the bad guys were. Here there are absolutely none. All the scenarios are  exactly as I envisioned them in the book. Even the places! Places I´ve never even been to! What kind of bullshit is that?

The version I read and which I loved so much
The novel has a straight forward plot, but the characters richness support it to such an extent so you forget about it. In fact, I used to like how basic it was. there were no unnecessary bull. Just a fast forward moving thriller. A forgotten art, when most thrillers are so muddled with subplots and characters it makes it all the more refreshening when an author like Elmore Leonard has the balls and go ahead and write something that is so uncompromising. Mr Majestyk is another book like that. But that was based on Leonards screenplay to the Charles Bronson vehicle. And a great film it was.


A couple played by Diane Lane and Thomas Jane gets mixed up in a scheme by accident and gets targeted for termination by a half-seminaole professional hitman, Blackbird and his associate the twitchy psychotic Ritchie. The federal agents put the couple in witness protection but the bandits find a way to lure them out.

That is the plot. As basic as basic grammar. It sounds shit.  But the novel is so much fun to read. None of that is represented well here.

This was a troubled production, as well, from what I have heard. And the nicest thing I can say is that everyone seem to have been extreme professionals in going out of their way to at least making the film not look like complete dogshit. And I give the film that. Everyone seems to be a professional about the project. None of it looks bad. the acting is solid, the directing is solid, the cinematography, of which I m not a fan of, is at least solid.. And the pacing of it makes it work. It is a solid piece of filmmaking that works. But it lacks any kind of soul or personality of it. It is not a fun watch. It makes me continue my habit of hard drinking.

I
Apparantly this is an indjun:


A....seminal Rourke...? (urgh)
His dipshit companion looks like this:

"Yahoooo!"

The couple look like Superman´s mom and The Punisher. That is all you need to know.  I´m not gonna bother. You know why,assholes? Because the couple in the book was not depressing, they were somewhat likeable. Apparently the studio felt, that problematic couple sells. I think we know the answer to that. People do not watch movies to see their own troubles.


It makes me sad writing about this film. It is such a dire work..  It is really nothing wrong about it per se. The  only thing it does different is complicating the relatonship between the couple by making them  struggle.  In the book they were a happy couple. Here it is more of a married couple trying to make up their differences. But it makes it even more depressing. Because now the story has no fucking purpose because of it! Jesus Christ,dudes!Did you not read the novel? The couple was a fun one. they are not fun anymore. Why would you care about then anymore?

This is such a depressing movie, you´d better off reading the book. Read Killshot by Elmore Leonard and your life will blossom.like a spring flower. Watch the film adaptation and yout flowers will die.

Next time on How to fuck up an Elmore Adaptations:?

måndag 30 november 2015

OH NO,ELMORE! WHAT DID THEY DO TO YOU? PART 1: STICK TO THE BOOK


 This is going to be a non-chronological ongoing series of failed Elmore Leonard adaptations.  Hopefully not in any way ranting, but looking at them and why they don´t really work as films  or if they have somethng that speaks for them.

Elmore Leonard, master of crime fiction passed away on August 201th 2013. He left a legacy of higly entertaining pulpy crime novels  and western stories for the rest of us to enjoy and hopefully pass on to new generations of readers of bad ass literature. A lot of his work has been adapted into television series and movies. Most notably Justified, (based on the Fire in the hole short story), Get shorty, Out of Sight and Jackie Brown ( originally titled Rum Punch).

There has been hit and misses among them. The biggest mistake has always been failing at capturing Leonards language and transfrom it visually. Sure the amazing dialogue is easy enough, but the tone in his command of the language, the dry humour has always been a big part of why his books are so enjoyable. Since the 70´s he gave up on western stories as they were not profitable anymore and tackled crime fiction instead, Inspired by George V Higgins The friends of Eddie Coyle Leonard started to write about the criminal underworld and the people who dwells there.

But not people who are emotionally scarred or carries the weight of the world on their shoulder. I think we have enough of those selfaware pyschologically crippled characters in crime fiction. He writes about dangerous people, that you actually like to hang with. Often, very stupid people who don´t know they are, but you wouldn´t want to meet them in real life. They are fleshed out, flawed, but not depressingly flawed. They feel human and you often find yourself laughing with them or at them. The books are usually highly character driven pieces in which there are long scenes of characters shooting the shit with each other. Something I belived influence Quentin tarantinos early works.

The plot of Stick concerns excon ernest Stickley jr who just got out of the slammer and is hanging out in Miami with  two-bit criminal  Rainy. He agrees to follow Rainy to deliver some money to some highly dubious individuals. Shit goes bad. Rainy gets killed and Stick  escapes. Now he has basically no where to go, but his streetsmart skills help him out even though as things gettng more complicated as the people who shot his friend want him dead. Normal people would have fled Miami, but not Stick. He sticks around and find himself in a position to make some hustling.

The plot seems like straight out of a Parker-novel. especially The Hunted ( also adapted several times), but with more hustling and scheming.

When Burt Reynolds decide to adapt Stick and star in it,, which is a very enjoyable piece of material , he got to be careful. The main character Ernest Stickly Jr, known as Stick; ex-con, finds himself almost directly in harms way being hunted by homocidal psychos and drugdealers. The great thing about the book is how Sick handles himself. He is at first so out of his league dealing with cuban drug dealers that it makes him likeable. In terms of smart, he is streetwise, but not very wise at all. It´s fun to follow him negotiating the quirky characters of rich hustlers in 1980´s Miami and how he comes out of it.

The problem with this film is Reynolds himself. He plays Stick as your prototypical all-knowing macho-as-hell manly man, which is not who Stick is. Not only that, the studio forced Reynolds to re-shoot parts of the movie, which is evident as the last part of the film makes little sense. Not only the bad deviations from the novel halfways, but the forced shoot em up- finale which is nowhere to be seen in the book- A poor attempt of making the film more commercial. [We here at the Explodable World of Action believe in dumb action . And encourage it whenever we see it. Unless the source material is badass in itself. And does not require meddling studio executive jerkoffs.] Add to that some  really awkward scenes in which it is obvious that the studio wanted more of the goofy Reynolds as seen in Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Banddit, rather than the Sharkys´Machine Reynolds.

But as a result it feels half-assed. It starts off pretty good. And some of the more colourful villains of the book has been recreated for memorable, although cheesy, effect.

Here is Moke, the psycho hitman who has targeted Stick for termination:
"he´s an albino,, so don´t say anything,ok?"

And then the out-of-his-fucking-mind piller chomping Chuck,who´s largely responsible for the death of Stick´s friend and heavily in league with a Cuban drugdealer named Nestor:


Jesus Christ, Charles Durning! Where the fuck have you been with that hair, those eyebrows and that shirt? You look like a goddamn garden gnome!

Then there is the aforementioned Nestor, the crimelord  who, I don´t know the correct technical term for it, is into sacrificial voodo bullshit. In a scene when Stick askes the drugdealer permission to take out Chucky (not on a date)  Nestor shows him around his mansion, picks up a scorpion and: goes into a creepy room lit with candles and a lackey on his knees, trying to motivate the lackey with the scorpion.
Stick: "Are you having a litte motivation seminar?"

So that is all  good. The film does more of an external visual presentation of these quirky characters from the book, which is sensible. In a 90 minute actionthriller you don´t want to delve into the psychology too much, but get the narrative running. Visually you get who they are. And that is cinema. So, that´s pretty cool, I guess.

But then , there is this cheesy shit.A preposterous montage scene: in which Stick is jogging on the beach to stock montage music:




Yeah, thanks for the shot of your sweaty legs...

Yeah, thanks a lot for that, Burt.. The 80´s  really got to you. You were really Stick-ing it to us.
But it´s also kind of hard to judge it for what it is. A product of its time. So was the book in the warped depiction of what was going on with the cocaine cowboys in Miami at the time.

In conclussion. I liked the first hour of it or so, but then the obvious reshoots demanded by the studio makes the picture take a real hard turn towards the worse

Read Stick instead of watching it. Stick to Stick by Leonard..

Addendum Note: Stick-The Book is also a semi-sequel to Swag, which is aruably one of Leonards finest books. The film and the novel does not require you reading it. But I highly recommend it.

Next time on How to fuck up an Elmore Leonard novel: Killshot from 2009

tisdag 22 september 2015

LIFE OF ACTION





Allright, this is a book I´ve been meaning to buy for some time. It´s written by a like-minded guy who enjoys the same kind of action-films I like myself. The book contains quite a lot of interviews. ranging from actors,stunt-people to filmmakers. From Scott Adkins , the formidable force from Undisputed 2-4, to lesser known stunt guys and girls and filmmakers.

There are some more well-known stars here like Dolph Lundgren, but also a som people I´ve never heard of before which makes this a package for both newcomers and aficionados. There are a lot of information that might not be new for hardcore fans, but there are also a lot that is new. At least for me. A nice balance of different levels of information. I approve. I really do.

One slight problem I had was  the Andy Lau interview. Now, I understand the difficulty of getting superstars  to agree to an interview, but the superficiality and the diplomatic answers from publicity interviews are limited in getting earnest and personal answers, and it is a shame. But I am interested in seeing Detective Dee, which I haven´t, So it´s not entirely without merits.

I also would have  liked to have perhaps a more fullpage pictures, maybe a couple of posters  of some stills. It would be great to have a full sized poster of Boyka in action from the Undisputeds on my wall. Perhaps it´s a licensing issue, I don´t know.

Mike Fury gets some great answers out of the more unknown ( initially to me , at least)  talents which made me look them up. 

Take Eric Jacobus.  He  has some great YouTube videos. I highly recommend checking out the Rope a Dope videos. Martial arts in a Ground hog day/Edge of Tomorrow concept. Very creative, funny as well as containing great martial arts sequences and manages to build a quirky world at the same time, using only action  and little to no dialogue. More cinema than most movies made today.

Life of Action is clearly written by a guy who is serious about action. It is refreshing. A lot of people seem to  think of action films as something to get drunk in front of. Unfortunately, it can be said for most of the time. But there are also a lot of hard working men and women who bleed for their interest of putting up great fight scenes and not only that, they try to elevate the genre by focusing on better story, plot and characters. by being innovative and creative in a genre that is held in very low esteem.

And it comes through in the interviews. For example Don "The Dragon"Wilson emphasizes the importance of story in today's action movies and uses The Bourne Identity as an example. The movies that were produced back in the 80´s and 90´s were in hindsight crippled by generic plots and bad acting. But look at the movies by Garth Evans (The Raid 1 &2, Merantau) and you see you can craft powerful action cinema using character and story. I think as an art form,  action/martial arts films need to develop with the times, but also not overuse technology like

A suggestion for the next volume might be an interview with the fight choreographer for the Netflix show Daredevil.  I think the most recent blend of the old school action and modern sensibilities can be found in that. It is  a superhero franchise, which is in vogue, but the attention to both the action choreography and the character and story is so good it brings tears to my eyes.

Good book, good read and I liked it!



måndag 18 maj 2015

MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME- The Final Chapter




The third installment in the Mad Max saga has an even bigger scope,  bigger production values, goofy 80´s popsongs in the credits and Tina Turner. It also features less violence and carnage, but has also interesting quirky characters and setups. Not too mention plenty of pigs, long  before someone told George Miller  that four hundred pigs was way too much and  Miller decided to take it down a notch and make a smaller more intimate film about just one pig; Babe.

Where The Road Warrior was for the most part a silent film, this one has much more dialogue, is a slow burner of a film and focuses more of world building mythology. The result is a very impressive, ambitious movie. With four-hundred pigs and a dozen kids. In the last movie, gasoline was a commodity. Now it is pigshit. The manure creates enough energy to sustain the large community that is Bartertown that Max drifts into.

In the opening of the film Max loses his car and tracks the thief to Bartertown. A town where you can barter. The settlement is involved in a bit of a power struggle. The overworld is controlled by Auntie (Tina Turner) and the underworld in which the pigs are being fed and handled is controlled by the dynamic duo Blaster/Master. Blaster is a big doofus muscleman and Master  a midget who rides on Blasters back and is pretty much in charge of the power supply and is in a better bargaining position for power than Auntie.

Auntie sees an opportunity to change the power dynamic and hires Max to get rid of her compettition. This leads to a duel within something that is in the title of the film. Thunderdome. but not beyond it. Not yet. A gladiator arena where two men enters and one man leaves. It is a very impressive sequence with plenty of extras and with Maurice Jarres bombastic score you know this is something different from the previous films.  As it turns out, Auntie sets Max up and put him in exile from Bartertown. Max is being forced into the desert (Beyond Thunderdome) and collapses there from the dry heat. A bunch of kids finds him, keep telling themselves that he is a savior and is going to take them away. Jesus, kids! Do we really Need Another Hero?

Somehow I used to think as this as a post apocalyptic Peter Pan. But instead of taking the kids away to a Neverneverland, Max tells them it´s just a bunch of bullshit and you are better off living where you are now, you ungrateful brats.

You might think that this movie severely lacks in  the automotive vehicular destruction. Well, not really. Max takes the kids back to Bartertown and manages to escape with a really cool train. Auntie does not like that so she sends her army of terrain vehicles after it.

The vehicles are actually cooler looking than anything in Road Warrior, but less impressive than Fury Roads steroid induced monster machines.So we do have a cool chase sequence to end the film. And Mxx is left in the desert, leaving the kids well on their way to discover the ruins of an ancient civilization of assholes. (SPOILER:It´s us)

And in the desert has he been, ever since. Forgotten with time and generations. Until...

onsdag 29 april 2015

THE RAID: MERANTAU PART 2:SHIT GETS REAL




[...]action is the most important artform ever. Its language is international and can be crossculturally adapted. A roundhousekick is still a roundhousekick no matter what language. Everyone can understand the awesome power of a good kick to the head or the burning sensation of a third degree burn from a bigass explosion.No misundertandings or translation errors. It just hurts as hell.

I am quoting my mission statement for this blog. And no other actionfilm embodies my thesis as Gareth Evans  shit-I´m-gonna-be-out-for-six-months-to a year-ouch!-kind of way-The Raid. That shit hurts! Whether it is a machete tearing up a leg or a head that gets smashed against light bulbs, the violence gives you a gut reaction which is a good thing, I believe.

Most people should know the concept of the film by now: An indonesian SWAT team makes a raid against a high rise building hoping to arrest the gang leader who lives secluded Howard Hughes style at the top, all paranoid and shit with surveillance all over the place. As a result , the team gets trapped and their only way out is to fight. Shit gets primal in other words. There is howeva other forces at work of which the police officers who takes part in The Raid(Tm) are unaware of at first.

It´s a sleak concept and expertly executed by writer/director Gareth Evans and it is technically more proficently executed than Merantau. The use of sound and visuals are very creative and the location in which it takes place may be the shittiest looking place I´ve seen in a film in a long time. It really looks lived in and dirty for real which gives the film a sense of real grittiness which fits perfectly with its primal survivalist aspect.

Evans has called the film a "survival horror film" and it certainly is a vivid description of it. It´s like Night of the Living Dead but with a twist; instead of shutting themselves in from the monsters outside, the monsters shut THEM in with them. Kinda scary actually....help!

Of course the physical performances of actors Yayan Ruhian, Joe Taslim and star Iko Uwais helps deliver the intense action to make you feel all the "ouch!" "ow!" and "urgh!" in your gut.

I honestly don´t know what else to add, except that it is a work of art. A work of art that belongs in the Louvre if your idea is to wreck the Louvre, stab all the visitors with a machete in their knees and continue to the next floor.

tisdag 14 april 2015

MAD MAX 2 THE CONTINUATION OF THE ADVENTURES OF A ROAD WARRIOR







After the successful killings of the culprits responsible for the brutal murder of his family  Max has now become a shell of a man. We know this because that´s what Mad Max 2 tells us. That´s the best thing about sequels. It refutes any kind of imagination on the viewer. "Geez, I wonder what happened to that ex-cop? Did he move on with his life? Start a new family? Did he learn that love can bloom even on a battlefield? "

Nope. he became a shell of a man. He did get a dog though.


Gasoline is a real problem when the film starts. It really never was when the original came out. People just drove around  without a care in the world. Here, like in the real world, gas is quite a commodity. Which makes this one more reletable to people. "Oh man,these people in their cars are dead. I feel so bad for them. Wait a minute...free gas?! I´ll take it!"

This is what Max do. It seems like his goal in life is to collect gas just to get by. It really has become a dog eat dog world. It is kind of shit, if you ask me.

Max roams around until he stumbles upon a settlement that has its own refinery. The settlement is however under siege by a bunch of Mohawk hairstyled motherfuckers, riding around the settlement like Native Americans used to do in those good ole racist westerns from the thirties.Huh, maybe the movie alludes to it. The mohawks? Hmm.. maybe Mad Max 2 is a futuristic western that critiques its genre-history?  But then you se this:


Would that make this one a futuristic Friday the 13th?  I think not, dumb ass.

But there are structural and visual similarities between Mad Max 2 and your typical Western. The iconic vast barren wastelands, the isolated protagonist, the community that needs his help. All those are western tropes, so I think the movie share at least some similarities.

Anyway, Max sees an opportunity to get some gas by helping one of them out. The inhabitants ( I call them Sons of Exxon ) are naturally skeptic to his intentions through simple acts of empirical studies.
After all, all the strangers they´ve met so far have shown  great murderous intentions and bad hair cuts. You don´t have to be an academic to understand their skepticism.

But when he hijacks a gastruck, ploughs through the Mohawk Madmen-camp, participate in a battle thwarting the threat of these ridiculous-looking bandits, they start to warm up to him. Max still claims he only did it for the gasoline, declines further deals with the Sons of Exxon and heads out on the highway for more Adventures of Solitude.

Big mistake, an ambush leads to them wrecking his car and killing his dog. An even bigger mistake.

I am not sure about the film´s narration, howeva´. The movie opens and ends with a voice over of how Max  begin his journey of becoming a man again. It tells the story from the perspective of a cave man boy, that somehow grew up to be an intellectual sounding old guy.  Something is kinda fishy here, because a lot of the events in the movie is told when the Caveman Boy is not around.

More implications that we are dealing with an unreliable narrator is when Caveman Boy uses his boomerang skills to kill of and maiming a bunch of the Mohawk Madmen in order to make him look capable and awesome as a kid.

Add the fact that they for some reason need Max to drive their truck on a straightass road, when basically anyone else could. It´s not like a car-chase pursuit like in the first movie, in which you saw Max´s skills.

You know  Caveman Boy is full of shit. For all I know, Road Warrior may never even have happened.It may be the same bullshit like the Captain Walker fairy tale in the next one. Who are you trying to blow smoke up their ass?  Fuck you, unreliable narrator. I prefer Mad Max.

lördag 14 februari 2015

MAD MAX ORIGINS: When Max went Mad

I hate cars. Really. Not only are they expensive to buy, they have a nasty habit of breaking down which means you need to take that shit to a mechanic. Who screws you over. And the gas. The.Fucking.Gas. The car drinks it. a lot. Which means more expenses.

These kind of problems are not really problems if you are an inhabitant of a post apocalyptic world where cars are a necessity for your survival and gasoline the big currency. It´s not a good time to be moping about gas prices then. Instead you murder any poor soul who has any.And take his. It´s a dog eat dog world. Oh..wait I am skipping ahead. Before there even were an apocalypse...there was...




Fuck yes. The groundbreaking carcrashing psycho fuck of a movie. The original ayatolla´ of car-flippin´-ova´. It is loud, obnoxious, weird, has the worst and most ridiculously over the top melodramatic musical score in history and the best car chases until The Road Warrior came along a few years later. Yes, the only flick that could beat this mutha at it´s own game was the sequel. But first we have an origin story to race through. How Max became Mad. And how Mel also became Mad long after he stopped being Max. No wait... Let´s skip that part.

Let´s be honest though. There are only two major car chases in it and although they are lengthy you kind of wish for more of the kinetic style director George Miller invented for this one. I also think the film would have benefitted from more of this:


This is the kind of outrageous cartoon wackiness that makes for an interesting contrast to the grim tone of the film. But I like the quirkiness of this one. It delivers quite a lot actually, from the badass introduction of Max Rockastansky to the car chases to suspenseful  and creepy Last House on the Left-type stalking at the end. Not to mention the colourful villains. Look at this guy:


You wouldn´t buy petrol from him.

The movie takes place right before the collapse of civilization. You can kinda tell in how they set things up. The roads are dangerous places. Well,  I guess they´ve always been, thanks to shitty  drunk drivers but NOW..they are..DANGEROUS!  The roads are infested with psychos who sniffed a lot more than glue before they started the engine. Also all cops, except Max can´t drive for shit.  I like it how the film introduces us slowly to Max, having him sit on the sidelines, listening in on the police radio how the other cops are faring in a high speed pursuit with a lunatic.We don´t see him fully until much later, only closeups on his sunglasses and when shit gets bad, Max realizes he needs to step in, puts on his driving gloves. (sophistication never hurts in a cynical violent world.) and takes care of business.

However the lunatic driver has friends. Lots of them and they are not happy so they declare war on the police and on Max. Max friend Goose bites the dust ( or at least becomes horribly disfigured. It´s not clear what) which makes Max question his career choice. He takes vacation and his family elsewhere where crazies with bad mohawks are sparse. However they are being tracked down  by the gang, Max ´s family gets run over which leads us to the title of the film. This is now Max becomes Mad Max. The film´s second carchase becomes the climax of the film and after the carnage only a single perp is left . Max chains the perps hand to a burning wreck, gives him a saw and tells him that he might have time to saw the hand off before the wreck explodes.

 *SPOILER* He doesn´t...

The barren backdrops gives the film a harsh,gritty Western-like look. It´s the same kind of savage lawless land the American west used to be. But with more Mel Gibson and less John Wayne. A good thing, I think.

First time I saw this, I was heavily disappointed. Why? Because I saw The Road Warrior first. And there fore didn´t like the original as much upon first viewing. It´s not fair though. How would you like it if you were the lesser successful of two brothers and when everyone else met you, hoping you were just as awesome  said "Dude, you kinda suck". Now,that´s not very nice,is it? Be nice, I say. Or shut the fuck up at least.

You could argue that the film has pacing issues. That after the initial carchase the film starts to drag a bit. The whole revenge aspect doesn´t come to full fruition until the last 20 minutes. But I kind of like
how we get to hang around with the creepy villainous weirdos that inhabits this pre-post-apocalyptic world before shit starts to hit the fan. And there is a fair amount of atmospheric tension and unease building up as the savage gang starts to stalk Max´s family.

It´s a low-budget film, but it delivers the same kind of thrashy exploitation that may leave a bad taste in your mouth if your not into this sort of flick.You might also find it kinda boring between the awesome bits. Personally I have grown fond of this first entry in the series which will continue later this year with less Mel Gibson but hopefully even more vehicular carnage.

In short Mad Max is a schlocky quirky movie that has plenty of rough edges to it. You could say that it´s the retarded little brother to The Road Warrior.  But that is not very nice.