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Genre
Historical Fantasy
Length
136 minutes
Director
Mel Gibson
Major Stars
Rudy Youngblood
Dalia Hernández
Jonathan Brewer
MPAA Rating
R
Year Released
2006
Review Posted on
7/13/2007
Rating
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Review by Lynn Nicole Louis
Perhaps Apocalypto as a filmic manifestation of Mel Gibson himself: passionate, intense, and just a little absurd. You can tell how Gibson approaches his films, Apocalypto in particular. He charges at them like a pissed-off Toro in the bullfighter's ring. He immerses himself completely in the story's culture, going to painstaking lengths to bury us in details even when the story's as shallow as a Honduran puddle in the dry season. But there's a kind of purity in his style that insists upon long, epic, immersive pictures. Not to mention they're more violent than Mad Max on amphetamines.
Apocalypto drops us by the collar into a civilization not our own and doesn't bother with exposition. Our hero is Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a wily young man whose father has shown him the ways of the forest and the skills of the hunter. His wife, Seven (Dalia Hernandez), and their son, Turtles Run (Carlos Emilio Baez), live humbly in the village with all the rest, working and listening to the prophetic tales of the elders. This fine, happy life collapses though, as the Mayan kingdom begins ravaging its own villages for sacrifice to the gods. While Jaguar Paw's village is being razed, he manages to lower his wife and son into a deep, unexplained hole, hiding them from the massacre. And even as he's being strung to the rest of the village's survivors and led to the acropolis for sacrifice, Jaguar Paw must plan his escape so he can rescue his family.
Like Gibson's other films, Apocalypto's details, as thick as they might be, still betray the simplicity of its story. And at its heart, Apocalypto is little more than a chase film. A good 90 minutes of it finds Jaguar Paw sprinting barefoot through the forest with a band of hunters closing in. But as Braveheart and Passion of the Christ have proven, simplicity isn't a problem for Mr. Gibson.
Neither is violence. Braveheart shocked early on with a swift beheading, and Jesus took lashings so brutal that Roger Ebert named Passion of the Christ the most violent film he'd ever seen. So for Apocalypto, which pulls focus on one of the most vicious civilizations in history, violence is an obvious requisite. As usual with Gibson's work, the indulgence with violence brims upon excessive. It's not that I believe Mr. Gibson to be a sadist; but rather I think he has no other way as a director to channel his audience's emotions. It seems to be a weakness of his, one that puts characters second fiddle to blood and guts. Granted, in Apocalypto, a certain level of brutality is required for us to believe in Gibson's Mayan world. But there are times when the film just revels in the bloodshed.
If nothing else though, Apocalypto is earnest. From the visuals -- by Dancing with Wolves veteran Dean Semler -- to the decision to use a nearly dead language, and to the casting of all no-name natives, Gibson has lunged at this picture with all his might. As an action/adventure film, it works and tastes greating going down, but in the end the meal is sparse and not too filling.w
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