George Miller’s road thriller is worth an evening for its frightening chases and Mel Gibson’s presence. The dialogue is crude and the acting uneven, but the cars feel heavy enough to do lasting damage.
This is a good, bruising road thriller whose chases are better handled than its dialogue. George Miller wants speed to frighten us, and keeps the violence close enough to ordinary life for that to happen. The open Australian landscape gives the cars room to accelerate without making anyone seem safe. At 91 minutes, the film has little interest in explaining how everything got this bad. That economy suits it, though several characters could have used a little more writing.
Cinematographer David Eggby keeps the camera low in the chases, making the passing road difficult to look away from. We feel too close to the tarmac to enjoy the view. Editors Cliff Hayes and Tony Paterson make the movement readable without letting it become comfortable. We flinched at the crashes. The vehicles feel heavy, and George Miller lets their weight and momentum make a collision frightening before it happens.
The action also has a streak of physical comedy, which makes its ugliness more disconcerting. George Miller understands the brief pleasure of watching a vehicle go out of control, then makes the consequences hurt. The timing is often funny enough to catch us off guard. This is where the film does more than a routine chase thriller: its violence seems capable of changing the people left to live with it. The rough surroundings help, since nothing looks safely set aside for a stunt.
Mel Gibson has enough presence to hold our attention without much help from the dialogue. The performance is most persuasive when it does least, leaving us to study a face rather than wait for another crude line. That restraint matters in a film so fond of noisy behaviour. Joanne Samuel, as Jessie Rockatansky, also helps keep the scenes of family life from feeling merely dutiful. The female characters have more spirit than the surrounding brutality might lead us to expect, although the writing remains thin.
George Miller and James McCausland’s screenplay is the weak point. Too often, a line insists on how dangerous somebody is when the action has already made it clear. Some performances push just as hard, and the result can feel coarser than the scene requires. The spare story does not need elaborate explanations, but it does need convincing people between the pursuits. When the dialogue takes over, the tension slackens.
Brian May’s music shares that tendency to press the point. It can make the threat feel overannounced when the sight of a fast-moving car is doing quite enough. The film’s rudimentary finish is easier to forgive, because the exposed roads and hard landscape are such effective places to stage danger. George Miller does not need a grand display of ruin to suggest that normal life is becoming untenable. The small scale keeps the trouble close to recognisable experience.
Against the road thriller’s usual pleasures, the film is unusually willing to make speed repellent. We still feel the pull of the chase, but the collisions prevent it from becoming a harmless game. Its roughness can be wearing, particularly when the actors have to carry a scene without an engine running. We recommend it for the force and precision of its action, with patience required for what happens between the driving. Leave time afterwards for something quieter.
