16 Best Mel Gibson Movies Ranked

The film that started it all for Mel Gibson, 1979's "Mad Max," remains one of cinema's greatest success stories, a real labor of love for the then-inexperienced filmmaker George Miller. "The toughest film I ever made was the first 'Mad Max,'" Miller once told IndieWire. "I didn't know much about filmmaking, and it was rather bewildering." The Aussie visionary had a budget of less than $400,000 to play with, yet his dystopian thriller made over $100 million at the global box office and held the record for most profitable movie ever made until the release of handheld horror "The Blair Witch Project" over two decades later, per Vanity Fair.

Gibson stars as "Mad" Max Rockatansky, a member of Australia's highway patrol who's becoming increasingly disillusioned with his job in this grim, near-future version of the Land Down Under. Society is collapsing, lawlessness is rife, and his colleagues are dropping like flies. But when Max tries to quit, Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who later played Immortan Joe in the 2015 Tom Hardy-led sequel "Mad Max: Fury Road") and his motorcycle gang kill his wife and child, running them down in the road. This triggers what would become a typical "Mel Gibson" moment — he snaps. Max goes mad, hits the road, and hunts down the bikers, dispatching them in a procession of insane stunts.