Film Forum

(1979, George Miller) In a gasoline-shortage when “people don’t believe in heroes anymore” and leather-clad cops and grunge-clad bikers contend for control of endless highways to nowhere, Max Rockatowsky (a baby-faced Mel Gibson, 23 and in only his second film) is the good guys’ top Interceptor, ready to quit because he’s starting to like it. But, amid smoking tires, flying metal, and skyrocketing fireballs, it’s ultimately a rubber ball bouncing past a sneaker down the white divider line that packs the biggest punch. Miller (who proved he could handle dialogue in Lorenzo’s Oil and barnyard fantasy in Babe films) repaves Outback highways with rubberstrips, but never forgets the people in proving Australian mastery of that most American of genres, the car chase. DCP. Approx. 93 min.