Apocalypto

Reviewed by Alicia Glass
February 12th, 2007

Director: Mel Gibson Studio: Touchstone MPAA: R Website: Click Here Review Rating: 7 out of 10

Rudy Youngblood plays Jaguar Paw in Apocalypto. Courtesy of Touchstone.

The pillage and destruction of a peaceful village that turns a normally amiable Hunter bound for sacrifice to a vengeful god, into a merciless vigilante fleeing his captors to try and get back to his wife and children.

This strange movie is a mish-mash of contradictions and attempts at greatness from many different angles, most of which don’t succeed simply because they’re contradictory. For example, the forest cinematography shots are astounding---or would be, without the afternoon bloodspray of your enemy highlighted by sunbeams slanted just right through the canopy. The humor displayed in the beginning of the movie is presented in a universal light (everyone has had problems with their mother-in-law), but remember folks, these are supposed to be savages. Expecting modern-day American humor to mesh well with 16th century Mayans strikes me as really strange. There’s an encounter in the forest with a neighboring tribe who wishes to pass through, which meanders into dream-prophecy a little later. And then the lovely if not primitive village gets marauded by Holcane raiders, who rape and pillage and kill. Boy howdy, do they. These scenes of sheer brutality, with close-ups and steady shots of the madness, is like a director’s brick to the back of the head---yes this IS horrific and yes you WILL watch it and be mortified. Most of what I took from this action was that the whole of humanity, regardless of your skin color and level of societal sophistication, is just screwed.

So Jaguar Paw (the main character) and most of his friends get tied together and taken on a many-day trek to the great Mayan capital, ostensibly as sacrifices for the God Kukulkan, who is said to be angry with the city. On the way there all sorts of things happen, including a prophecy made by a creepy little girl riddled with plague, which ends up more or less saving Jaguar Paw himself. The Mayan city is vast, with actual buildings and industry already set up, and a whole lot of people playing at being the equivalent of nobility in this city. (Try and imagine getting permanent facial piercings with thick slabs of malachite.) Jaguar Paw, painted up for the sacrifice and actually on the sacrificial block when it happens, is saved by the eclipse that is seen as a sign that their God is satisfied with his sacrifices. Of course, this doesn’t guarantee Jaguar Paw his freedom and life, no. He has to survive a deadly game of target practice and then endure a chase through the jungle allllll the way back to his home by the best Hunters from the Mayan city, all with no food, supplies, or any kind of weapon. Jaguar Paw turns out to be resourceful beyond belief, and once he gets back to his own territory, begins dispatching his would-be dispatchers in the most bloody and violent manner possible. He finds and rescues his wife and children, and they become as phantoms to the forest. There’s a surprise twist at the very ending that only led me to ask, ‘What was the point of that?’

Evo Factor is MEDIUM. It’s a Gibson film, which means it will endure through the ages on the directors’ aplomb alone. However, the movie is an ultra-violent romp through human cruelty to each other, with little culturisms and even less of an actual story. And the very title doesn’t seem to fit the movie at all.

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