Film Reviews
By Nathaniel Bell

Mayan Mayhem

“Apocalypto” is a shamelessly thrilling roller coaster ride for people who prefer their action bloody and raw. The pet project of director Mel Gibson (movie star, Catholic auteur and tortured soul), it comes on the heels of his controversial “The Passion of the Christ,” a difficult act to follow. Forsaking the intensely religious milieu of that widely misunderstood film, Gibson invites us to sup with pagans, plunging us headlong into one of human history’s many blind spots.

The story concerns a young Mayan hunter named Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) whose village is ransacked by a group of bloodthirsty tribesmen. After a tortuous journey to the Mayan capital, Jaguar Paw and his fellow captives learn they are to be sacrificed in return for a better crop. The climax of the film is an extended chase sequence that winds through a booby-trapped jungle back to “civilization.” 

Vividly imagined and breathlessly staged, “Apocalypto” is gripping for the entirety of its 138 minutes. Like “Passion,” its lines are uttered in an ancient tongue (Yucatec Mayan, to be precise) with English subtitles. Governing the proceedings is a fierce, not altogether healthy obsession with the destruction of the body. There are more flesh wounds here than in a Monty Python sketch, all of which are filmed in salacious detail. Throats are slit, hearts are ripped from chests, and brains are exposed, to say nothing of the film’s bawdy streak. Within the first few minutes, a character is duped into eating a breakfast of wild pig testicles. Clearly, Gibson has a thing for physical “humor.” (He names the Three Stooges as a major inspiration.) Unfortunately for him, this propensity for bloodletting creates another prime opportunity for the media to bash an obviously conflicted talent, whose sincere religious convictions look like fanaticism in today’s jaded climate.

Truth is, only the most sensitive viewers will object to the violence in “Apocalypto.” The carnage remains tolerable, even exciting, because it is firmly rooted in the idea of cinema as spectacle. Thanks in large part to cinematographer Dean Semler and production designer Tom Sanders, every sight offers moviegoers something new. Superficially, the body count is no lower than one of those dreadful “Saw” movies, but instead of limbs being hewn off in dimly lit backrooms we get heads rolling down great stone ziggurats. The film will inevitably be compared to Gibson’s own “Braveheart,” but “Apocalypto” is only a few generations removed from Burroughs and Kipling. The last hour or so recalls Cornel Wilde’s “The Naked Prey,” one of the great adventure flicks of the ‘60s.

Gibson’s epic is so full of eye-popping pageantry it’s easy to overlook its ambitious moral design. Unlike many ready-made action films catered to large audiences, “Apocalypto” isn’t afraid to show evil in all its putrescence. The cruelty, though severe, dares the audience to ask, “Could it happen here?”

Send me your opinions at nbell@netlistings.com