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Language: English
Directed : Mel Gibson
Writing credits (WGA) : Mel
Gibson , Farhad Safinia
Cast: Rudy Youngblood as Jaguar
Paw , Dalia Hernandez as Seven ,
Jonathan Brewer as Blunted
Review
 "Apocalypto"
is one of the few movies that I started
off seriously disliking before having a
complete change of mind turnaround. For
the first half hour, the film has a
simplistic perspective of ancient
Colombian villagers. The film seems to
say that their sense of humor was as
crude as some of our sense of humor
today (bodily function jokes are
universal and timeless, supposedly) and
the film keeps hammering away at that
idea instead of dramatizing any of the
formal traditions of its peoples. But
the movie gets better, much better. In
fact, it gets pretty damn good. By the
end of its 2 hour and 20 minute running
length, I had wished it had gone on
longer – into perhaps a 5 hour movie to
really do this subject matter justice.
Once the village is invading by
outsiders, the film gets graphically
violent. The intruders are of course
Mayan guerillas that attack and pillage
without mercy. The film’s character of
interest is Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood
in his acting debut), whose father is
killed in front of him. He is captured
like many others and forced on a trek to
the Mayan temples where human sacrifices
are made to appease the gods.
 As
another entry into the Mel Gibson cinema
of agony and suffering, "Apocalypto"
feels right at home next to the auteur’s
"Braveheart" and "The Passion of the
Christ". Innocent people face great
indignity and are executed in public
arenas for the masses to cheer over.
While the Mayan civilization is held up
to admirable scopes in our history books
as an accomplished society, Gibson
suggests that they were a culture likely
preoccupied with homicidal rage more
than anything else. Everyday to the
Mayans was a bloodsport, and it was an
especially good day if a slave was
mutilated to death in the process.
When Jaguar Paw luckily avoids public
execution by decapitation on top of the
temple’s altar, he is immediately forced
into a death gauntlet where he can run
for his life. But he has to watch his
steps because an army of men will try to
spear him to death. It must be assumed
that no man has ever survived before,
because the Mayan’s are astonished when
Jaguar Paw gets away. The film turns
into a drawn-out jungle hunt that
contains some of the most exciting
sequences seen at a movie this year.
Without checking my watch, the last half
of the movie or so was all about Jaguar
Paw trying to outrun a band of
executioners. This is fortunately where
Gibson succeeds most. While the film’s
dialogue was never a strong point in the
first place, the last half is where
action filmmaking takes precedence over
anything else. Gibson is if anything a
great action filmmaker and he runs his
cameras through an authentically wild
jungle that doesn’t feel like it’s been
manicured for the sake of an impeding
Hollywood production crew. This wild
chase is tirelessly inventive, and
Gibson keeps ratcheting up the tension
with a number of close calls. We get
very engaged by our hero’s survivalist
choices – whether it is running, or
setting up a deathtrap, or to do some
more running, or perhaps jumping down a
very tall waterfall. But our hero’s
instincts are well attuned to his
surrounding environment, and he is as
much a jungle warrior as his pursuers.
 Our
hero does have a family that is
comprised of a pregnant wife and a young
son. It becomes too much of a
coincidence that she is going to give
birth by the time the climax is coming
to an end. There is another development
with a far more grand coincidence, but
this time the coincidence shouldn’t be
met with viewer apprehension. We’ve
watched a two hour-plus movie about
bullies knocking Jaguar Paw and his
tribe around, and now a bigger set of
bullies have arrived (this must denote
the fall of the Mayan culture). Gibson’s
conclusion is a wallop of a visual
punchline, and this is where he stirs
the imagination of his audience.
And this is where I suggest that
"Apocalypto" should have been turned
into a 5-hour movie that gave us more
story. Of course we live in a time
period where a big studio 5-hour movie
can never exist because of marketing
issues and concerns of a mass audience’s
patience. Not likely to ever happen, but
I’ll still be panting for Gibson to come
up with Part II in the form of a sequel.
MEDIA PARTNER
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