Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) has made a promise.
After his entire village is wiped out by a group of murderous marauders, he and the other survivors are taken through the jungle to a gigantic city of bustling crowds, crowded pathways and massive stone pyramids. It is here he sees the women folk of his tribe callously pressed into slavery, but that is nothing compared to what is in store for him and the other young, strong males remaining in his group.

Taken to the top of the biggest pyramid, Jaguar Paw sees the true horror of human sacrificing awaiting him and his friends. Hearts are pulled beating from their hosts and heads are sent thumping down the gigantic stone steps of the building to the cheering bloodthirsty crowd down below. But this warrior knows this is not his time to die, not his place to go meet his ancestors. His family is hidden back at the mysterious underground caverns of his devastated village, and not even the overwhelming ultra-violence and superior forces of this new civilization will be enough to stop him from keeping his promise and returning to them.

It goes without saying that writer/director Mel Gibson has been in the news quite a bit of late. Whether it is his drunken anti-Semitic outbursts at a traffic stop or his recent interviews comparing this film to the war in Iraq, the multitalented filmmaker certainly hasn’t managed to keep himself out of the public eye. Now that his new Mayan adventure film “Apocalypto” has hit theaters we can finally turn our attentions firmly to it and see if all this fuss is anything other than a tempest in a tea pot or if the picture is in fact a masterpiece worthy of celebration.

The answer is someplace smack-dab right in the middle. As a low-tech stripped-down action-adventure, “Apocalypto” is an unabashed triumph. Once Jaguar Paw starts running for his life and desperately tries to return to his waiting family, the movie takes off like a full-blown adrenaline blast of visceral blood-thirsty excitement exploring a culture and a landscape like nothing else seen this year. Like Peter Weir (“Gallipoli”), George Miller (“Mad Max”) and Richard Donner (“Lethal Weapon”), directors Gibson has worked for in the past, the “Braveheart” Oscar-winner certainly knows how to generate suspense and excitement, and the eye-popping nature of this motion picture is certainly like nothing else we’ve had the good fortune to come across in quite some time.

But if “Apocalypto” holds more lofty goals than just being a straight-forward chase film between a group of vicious killers and a driven everyman looking only to safe his wife and child then Gibson has failed pretty much miserably. The movie purports to be an examination of how civilizations destroy themselves from within, how their own ghastly moral decomposition can eat them up and cause their own extinction.

Yet none of these ideals are made remotely clear by the film. Gibson goes out of his way to lovingly photograph every facet of the Mayan’s use of human sacrifice but doesn’t begin to give these rituals any other sort of context, looking at them on a purely surface level and refusing to go any deeper. Sure the blood looks horrifically fantastic glistening off the cold stone surfaces of the pyramids, but that doesn’t mean these images hold some complex moral subtext that’s universally captivating.

More, the whole film is seen through the eyes of an outsider, so trying to figure out why this great South American civilization disappeared from the face of the Earth is an absolute impossibility. We don’t spend enough time with them; in their cities, with their people, with their culture; to understand how this internal disintegration played into the hands of the Spanish invaders who would eventually wipe them out. None of it is there on the screen, and for all of Gibson’s talk to the contrary if these are the opinions and mores he’s trying to impart to audiences than it goes without saying he hasn’t done the job he set out to accomplish.

Still, “Apocalypto” is such a kinetically visual kick in the pants and an astonishing visual wonderment it’s difficult not to be taken aback by the near-brilliance of much of it. Technically, this film is a masterpiece, Gibson and his talented group of craftsmen crafting such a mythical epic of survival and turpitude the thing literally took my breath away over and over and over again. 
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Director & Producer

Mel Gibson

Cast

Rudy Youngblood - Jaguar Paw
Dalia Hernandez - Seven
Jonathan Brewer - Blunted
Morris Birdyellowhead - Flint Sky
Carlos Emilio Baez - Turtles Run
Ramirez Amilcar - Curl Nose
Israel Contreras - Smoke Frog
Israel Rios - Cocoa Leaf
María Isabel Díaz - Mother in Law
Espiridion Acosta Cache - Old Story Teller
Mayra Serbulo - Young Woman
Iazua Larios - Sky Flower
Lorena Hernández - Village Girl
Itandehui Gutierrez - Wife
Sayuri Gutierrez - Eldest Daughter

Production Co.

Icon Productions

Produced by

Ned Dowd
Vicki Christianson
Mel Gibson

Writer

Mel Gibson
Farhad Safinia

Music

James Horner