Product Description

A leather-clad lawman with a sawed-off shotgun hunts outlaw bikers in a barren future. Directed by George Miller.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11894 in DVD
• Brand: Mad
• Released on: 2002-01-01
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dimensions: .31 pounds
• Running time: 94 minutes

Amazon.com
The Road Warrior is already a classic, sans condescending genre distinctions like "sci-fi" or "action." But the story of Mel Gibson's stately antihero begins in Mad Max, George Miller's low-budget debut in which Max is a "Bronze" (cop) in an unspecified postapocalyptic future with a buddy-partner and family. But unlike most films set in the devastated future, Mad Max is especially notable because it is poised between our industrialized world and total regression to medieval conditions. The scale tips towards disintegration when the Glory Riders burn into town on their bikes like an overamped cadre of Brando's Wild Ones. Representing the active chaos that will eventually overwhelm the dying vestiges of civil society, they take everything dear to Max, who will exact due revenge. His flight into the same wilds that created the villains artfully sets up the morally ambiguous character of the subsequent films. --Alan E. Rapp

DVD features
MGM's special edition restores the original Australian soundtrack (including Mel Gibson's voice!) to the film for the first time on home video. That in itself would be enough to make this a DVD essential, but cinematographer David Eggby, special effects supervisor Chris Murray, and art director Jon Dowding look under the hood of this revved-up revenge classic in a commentary track and the featurette "Mad Max: The Film Phenomenon." Their nuts-and-bolts comments and nostalgic stories of seat-of-the-pants stunts provide a terrific survey of low-budget action moviemaking by ambitious young filmmakers. Less essential is the rather wan Mel Gibson star portrait (apparently Gibson and director George Miller were too busy to participate in the supplements, so we make do with his acting teacher and costars) and the entertaining, if truly trivial, "Road Rants" subtitle track. --Sean Axmaker