Highway cop goes rogue and seeks revenge after a biker gang kills his best friend, wife and son.
Simple plot for one of the best Ozploitation movies, and a film that spawned a franchise that in turn created a genre of its own with the next entry. Gibson is a bit callow, but at the end he is quite believable as someone who has gone dead inside. Keays-Byrne is excellent, soft-spoken and spitting, and his biker gang is actually perverted and menacing, unlike the macho cartoons that populated most American biker films.
Followed by Mad Max 2 (1981), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and, three decades later by the best one yet, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).
Note: the end credits list most of the cast in alphabetical order. In the interest of clarity, and because some of the role names are a bit obscure (some actors are listed without role atrribution), I have listed them in order of appearance. If anyone with better knowledge of Aussie film and TV can help out, I would most appreciate it!
Note 2: When I intially did this entry in July 2015, the IMDb entry did not list role attributions for any of the minor characters. Since then it has been updated, either by someone with access to film records, or from cribbing off of here. Given the role titles are exactly the same as mine, I assume the latter. Nice to have my hard work recognized, even if anonymously. :P
-Dave W.
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