- 10
- Dec
Make no mistake about it - Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto is a snuff flick from beginning to end. The movie begins with the brutal hunt and slaying of a wild pig and continues the blood letting up until the very end. With that said, Mel Gibson does a great job, just as he did with Passion of the Christ, of creating realistic cinema about ancient times, ancient cultures and distant lands. No one does it better.
Mel Gibsons fixation with over-the-top expressions of brutality are no less evident in this film as they were in The Passion but just as in The Passion the entire story comes off entirely realistic and believable. Truth be told, Mel probably overplays the ‘joy’ and underplays the brutality, but I’m not sure most will appreciate his efforts to make the story palatable.
Fundamentally Apocalypto is the best “Rocky” movie you will ever see. Its the story of a small tribe of indigenous south americans who are over-run by a “modern”, organized military machine (remind you of any one?) and then sold into slavery and sacraficed at the alter.
Essentially one character (our hero/Jesus figure) after being injured, manages to make it into the forest where a hunting party chases him on his way back to help his wife and child who he has hidden. This is where the story gets interesting but unfortunately its only in the last 3rd of the movie do things go from chillingly grotesque to exciting.
I give this movie 3 out of 4 stars - mainly because Mel does such a great job of recreating a setting and his hero is truly admirable. There are lots of socio-political overtones in this movie that are valid even today but I’m sure I will have to see it one or two more times to grasp them all.
If you have a stomach for Mel Gibsons sense of reality and mythology then I think you will find this movie engaging and entertaining. If you are, however, looking for a pleasant Saturday afternoon at the movies, you may want to choose something different.
Read Slate’s Review Here: