MS Cinemania 1994 - Leonard Maltin Review:

In the desolate near-future, the police have their hands full keeping roads safe from suicidally daring drivers and roving gangs. Top cop Gibson tires and quits, but when his wife and child are murdered by vicious cyclists, he embarks on high-speed revenge. Weird atmosphere and characters combine with amazing stunt work in this remarkable action film. Thrown away by its U.S. distributor (which also redubbed it with American voices), later found its audience in the wake of successful sequel.

The Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction:

This low-budget exploitation movie builds up to the vigilante-style revenge of spaced-out policeman Max Rockatansky (Gibson) - who is almost as disturbed as his antagonists - on the motorcycle gang that killed his wife and child. It proved to be the successful harbinger of a boom in post-holocaust sf films where a dying civilization is pitted against a growing barbarism. Miller, whose debut feature this was, is extremely econimical with data about just what (other than fuel shortages) has happened to create this crumbling of the social structure in Australia. Nonetheless, his vision of anarchy's spread - the atmosphere is reminiscent of John Carpenter's Assault On Precinct 13 (1976) - is credible and well achieved. The film's instant success was due to the panache (and great skill) with which the chase sequences and spectacular vehicle demolitions were mounted. Prints shown in the USA were dubbed so that audiences there should not be subjected to the brutalities of the Australian accent.