Warner Home Video, 1981, 95 min.
This movie is in the FetchDog Top 20.
In the post-apocalyptic future (or is it our present??), due to the inability of man to control his greed and his violent impulses as a result of it, society has been destroyed. Now all that remains is a wasteland ruled by anarchy and the need for gasoline. Men kill one another for "juice" to run the frightening weapons of internal combustion that are all they have left.
Over this blasted landscape walks a man who is injured both outside and in - his wife and child mowed down before his eyes - and he is just aiming to survive. This man is Max, and his laconic (and handsome) toughness marked actor Mel Gibson as the new Clint Eastwood and made him a star of equal standing.
Max is accompanied by his equally tough and loyal Australian Cattle Dog, who is simply called Dog. His wide-bodied stance and frequently bared arsenal of teeth, along with his insouciantly begrimed red kerchief, make him the canine counterpart of the coolly vicious costuming style which launched a new trend in mohawks and well-studded leather in the early eighties.
Max and Dog share everything, down to the same food, if you want to call it that. For this they are both grateful: most men in this desert don't have a can of dog food to spare.
The movie is an exemplar of stripped-down violence and suspense based on a very simple premise: who is going to kill who first? Although we are happily spared the direct sight of Dog's demise (not the case with the humans' ends), it is inevitable that he does not make it through to the end.
But "almost" is as good as it gets in this world where life is cheap and gas expensive.
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