I’m a Thunderdome era guy, that’s more my age bracket, but it’s been decades since l’ve even seen it. All l can say is my preconceived notions of what l thought the original Mad Max would be like were way off. 

Right off the bat, Australian accents? Right hand drive cars? Holy shit this is a foreign language flick. On go the subtitles. I didn’t realize the Mad Max movies were set in Australia.

I also didn’t get a “post apocalyptic” vibe. In the big opening car chase scene he plays a cop, and there are other cops, and a restaurant (called Fat Nancy’s, haha), a phone booth, and other elements of a functioning society. 

It has been a good while since l’ve seen a movie that made me ask “what the F is even going on right now?” as much as this flick. Virtually every scene change has something about it coming out of left field. 

For example, the very next cut scene after the big opening car chase scene is a shot of a cozy little house with some sultry saxophone playing, then they show the inside and there’s Mel with a toddler on the counter and some weird ass mannequin head staring at him, and across the room is his lady literally playing a saxophone. 

And it goes on from there.

At the end of the day it’s a psychedelic motorized good guys vs. bad guys flick. It’s actually done pretty well for what they were going for, but it’s weird and hard to follow at times. 

Mel Gibson is not Australian and it was kinda fun listening to his inconsistent attempts at an Australian accent. Overall l’ll give it a C.