A marvellous movie. There's not much fresh I can eye. It saw the feature debut of a magnificent director who swept people up in his operatic vision.
It's wonderfully cast - the high pitched operatic work of Hugh Keays Byrne and Vincent Gil, the likeability of Mel Gibson and Joanne Samuel, the blonde friend Geoff Parry, the muscly camp of Roger Ward, the ockerism of Steve Bisley, the cop who gets a "saucepan in the throat", Tim Burns' psycho Johnny the Boy
As in Mad Max 2 the action sequences are superb and less famously it's also marvelously suspenseful. There's a lot of fake outs eg Goose getting up the next day, falling over, then getting killed... ditto with the attack on Jesse.
There's a lot of humour and heart too. Would it have worked with James Healey in the lead and not Gibson? Yes but not as well because Gibson bought vulnerability.
I'm struck how low the death toll is in this. The night rider dies in the original chase and his girl but not pursuing cops. Goose still lives. So does Max's wife. (It's grim for both but not death.) The couple that are attacked at the beginning still live - he seems to have been raped and she was but they are still alive. And the initial bikies just come off the bridge. The kid is killed. And the later bikies.
Great movie.
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