Before going to see this movie I thought for weeks as to whether I should support Mel Gibson or not. I don’t know whether or not Mel Gibson is actually an anti-semite or is guilty of many of the things he is accused of such as alcoholism. There is one thing I do know for sure… he is a filmmaker and I will not judge him based on his actions outside the movies. Mel Gibson has a large filmography as an actor, but also a very impressive filmography of a director which include films such as Braveheart, The Man Without a Face, and The Passion of The Christ. The only one of those films I haven’t seen was The Man Without a Face and if you have seen any of those Mel Gibson films you know about how serious and brutal they really can be. The Passion of The Christ which depicted the final hours of Jesus’ life was no exception and neither is Apocalypto.

While hunting a tapir (a pig-like animal), Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), his father, Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead), and other members of his Mesoamerican native tribe encounter a group of terrified refugees fleeing into the forest whose group’s leader explains that their lands have been ravaged. When the hunters return to their village, Flint Sky explains to Jaguar Paw that he shouldn’t let the refugee’s fearful state get to him because his own fear may destroy him. The following morning, after waking from a nightmare, Jaguar Paw notices strangers, led by Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo), entering the village and leads his pregnant wife, Seven (Dalia Hernandez) and his son, Turtles Run (Carlos Emilio Baez), to saftey by lowering them into a small cave not far from the village. Jaguar Paw then returns to the village to fight off the raiders but is beaten down and is forced to watch his father have his throat slit by a raider named Middle Eye (Gerardo Taracena). As Jaguar Paw and the surviving members of his tribe are led into the jungle by the Mayan raiders in shackles, one of the raiders surveys the area and cuts the rope leading into a small cave. Jaguar Paw’s family is trapped and he himself is being led into the enormous empire of the Mayans.

I can’t even recall how many people I’ve I talked about that have done something I don’t approve of and then I inform others that we shouldn’t pay attention to what they do in their lives but rather what they do in the movies. So… despite what Mel Gibson has done in the past few months, he can still make a really good film. His more recent films such as The Passion of The Christ and Apocalypto have many things in common. Both films depict a tragic story in which a hero severely suffers, the others who may be contributing to the suffering appear extremely dark and almost evil, and the others suffering appear helpless. The worlds in which the stories take place can be sometimes a little over the top and a bit exaggerated to make the story seem more intense than it really is. Also, we cannot forget the haunting soundtracks as well as the foreign language Gibson’s films are portrayed through. The style is definitely a form of over-the-top Romanticism in combination with tragedy, almost to be historical tragic dramas. The controversial nature of the films and all of the elements I have listed above are what truly draws audiences to the theater. Let’s just call it “Gibsonism.”

Though there is nothing about the acting that I can really comment about because I thought it was where it needed to be, but I am not familiar with one of these performers. Then again, I don’t expect you to know any of these actor/actresses considering they are all unknowns from The Yucatan, Mexico City, and some are Native Americans from the United States and Canada, and locals from Los Tuxtlas and Veracruz.

The screenplay by Mel Gibson and Farhad Safinia takes on a journey with the group of Mesoamerican tribesmen that are being held prisoner as one by one they fall to exhaustion from the heat, have their hearts torn out from their chests and are decapitated, or get released only to be killed on a ball court. There are many instances in the film where one finds it hard to bear what they had to go through, but if you were sold as a slave and no one would buy you, you were released and that was the only way you gained your freedom.

Gibson’s and Dean Semler’s cinematography has no fancy tricks, but it does include a few of the techniques used in The Passion of The Christ. Of course there are many slow motion shots as one may expect in a film like this, but it also contains many shots of the reactions of the Mayan citizens wooing and snarling at the Mesoamerican prisoners as they make their to be sacrificed.

James Horner’s score is something primitive with many tribal wind instruments and sounds of nature to depict the innocence of the Mesoamerican tribe, but also the disguised trap that nature can sometimes appear innocent and often not be. It plays well to the setting and the overall mood of the film as did John Debny’s middle-eastern hymns for The Passion of The Christ.

I find no large problems in Mel Gibson’s films, but I must warn you, it does follow certainly does follow the rule of “What you see is what you get.” There really aren’t too many surprises and if you think you are going to see a Mayan spoken film about the deathmarch of a group of prisoners controlled by what seem to be a somewhat ruthless people, that’s what you are going to see.

Rated R for sequences of graphic violence and disturbing images.
Running time 139 minutes.