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Average User Score: 8 (165 sources)

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lisagraham

-1

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I thought this movie was great! Really authentic and believable. It had a lot of gore/blood/dead bodies, but it all had a purpose and tied in with story... actually helped improve the story and the intensity of Jaguar Paw's plight. I truly...
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I thought this movie was great! Really authentic and believable. It had a lot of gore/blood/dead bodies, but it all had a purpose and tied in with story... actually helped improve the story and the intensity of Jaguar Paw's plight. I truly believed this could have been an actual account of a person's life, it had real historical accuracy!
If you can stomach the gore, watch this movie!

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Posted jun 2, 2008 4:41 am pt

punisherwarzone

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A MASTER PIECE OF A FLIM SO MUCH GORE AND A LITTLE BIT OF HUMOR MEL HAS DON IT AGAIN WITH THE GREAT GORE LIKE THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST OSOME MOVIE BY THE WAY ANY WAY I LIKED IT ALOT I WISH LEDGER WAS IN IT OR SOMETHING YOUKNOW HPE HE DOES ANOTHER...
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A MASTER PIECE OF A FLIM SO MUCH GORE AND A LITTLE BIT OF HUMOR MEL HAS DON IT AGAIN WITH THE GREAT GORE LIKE THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST OSOME MOVIE BY THE WAY ANY WAY I LIKED IT ALOT I WISH LEDGER WAS IN IT OR SOMETHING YOUKNOW HPE HE DOES ANOTHER GREAT FLIM

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Posted mar 25, 2008 2:09 pm pt

49thSurvivor

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I'm not sure why I even bothered with this film. It didn't look too interesting. I don't think Mel Gibson is anything special as a director. I'm not that fascinated by Mayan culture (It's all about the Aztecs, baby!). But I was struck by a desire...
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I'm not sure why I even bothered with this film. It didn't look too interesting. I don't think Mel Gibson is anything special as a director. I'm not that fascinated by Mayan culture (It's all about the Aztecs, baby!). But I was struck by a desire to see some of the old ultra-violence and I knew Old Mel was good for it.

Unlike the pre-packaged Passion of the Christ, Mel had to gimmick this one up a bit. First, he had to use all Yucatek dialogue with English subtitles. Then he had to use more make-up and prosthetics than the annual convention of amputee whores (Whores who happen to be amputees; not people who are whores for amputees—that's a different convention). And finally, he had to put his name over the title because there are no stars in it and the mainstream public could care less about the Mayan civilization (they, like me, favor the Aztecs).

The story follows Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), who, along with the rest of his village is kidnapped by a group of slave traders. Before being kidnapped, Jaguar manages to hide his family in a hole but through a series of unfortunate events, his family becomes trapped in the hole and Mr. Paw must escape his captors and save his pregnant wife and child.

The story is torn between taking us into a new world and wanting us to connect on a universal level. The compromise is to show a visually captivating and detailed world in terms of costumes and art direction while also showcasing the familiarity of family loyalty. Unfortunately, the compromise diminishes the overall feel because it takes away the uniqueness of the culture. Yes, there are cultural divides like human sacrifice and slavery, but without the whys, it's all just set dressing. At one point in the film, Jaguar Paw and his fellow captives pass a large group of mining slaves, covered in a white dust. What they're mining, why they're mining it, and why there needs to be so many miners is left unanswered. While some may argue that this is Gibson showing the world at face value, it seems more like a missed opportunity and makes the whole effort seem half-hearted.

Instead of bringing us deeper into an unfamiliar world, Gibson is content to bore us for the first hour where the captives trudge along to the city where they'll be sacrificed while the second half is a comically-terrible chase that's a mix of The Fugitive and First Blood. How bad is it? Well, this next part will contain spoilers so if you don't want to ruin the hilarity, don't read on.
Crazy Mel in a split-second from the teaser trailer

The first guy who dies gets a jaguar to the face. Another guy is randomly attacked by a snake and apparently, the solution to this jungle-dwelling people is to say **** it" and move on, like they've never had to deal with snake bites before. Later, after they've followed Jaguar Paw off a waterfall, he attacks them with bees. He throws a beehive at them. Where he got the beehive and how he was able to transport it without getting stung to death himself remains unknown. The only certainty during the chase is that all the guys chasing Jaguar Paw get, in a term I will now coin, jungle-****ed. It's Home Alone in the jungle.

More hilarity follows as Gibson clearly has little respect for this culture and would rather exploit them like his good Christian ancestors before him. This is never offensive (at least not to me; my people got the business in his last film), but provides some of the film's biggest laughs. For instance, in a scene that could have come directly from a cartoon, the captives learn about their impending sacrifice from paintings on the wall. It's hilarious to see the thought-process on the character's faces (translated from Mayan): "Let's see, this guy…he's being stabbed….his heart is removed…and then they cut off his head. And he's painted blue…Wait. I'm painted blue. Ooooooh crap."

And then there's the fake drama of rain which can supposedly drown Jaguar Paw's family because since you can't disprove it, Mayans lacked the buoyancy of the white man. Of course, Jaguar's wife may have been weighed down by her fetus, which she manages to pop out…underwater. Watching this baby just emerge submerged was almost when I stood up and said "Well, I've had enough." But it was clear that the film was almost over and I was laughing too hard to stand.

Despite Gibson's efforts to paint a vivid portrait of Mayan life at the beginning of their civilization's downfall, beyond the flashy violence and pseudo-historic recreation, the substance only ranges from the mundane to the unintentionally comedic.

--Matt Goldberg, WantonDistraction.com

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Posted sep 6, 2007 10:44 am pt

faCt24

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Great, Great movie. The movie was so good I forgot it was captioned. A lot of gruesome scenes , medium to a lot of action, and great history and civilization point of view.

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Posted jul 24, 2007 1:28 am pt

bgres077

-1

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Apocalypto was a very good movie showing what life is like for a jungle civilization. Just a warning, the movie is entirely subtitles so you better like to read.

This movie had a lot of gore so be prepared to see slitting of throats,...
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Apocalypto was a very good movie showing what life is like for a jungle civilization. Just a warning, the movie is entirely subtitles so you better like to read.

This movie had a lot of gore so be prepared to see slitting of throats, ripping hearts out of live people, sacrificial ceremonies, and much much more gore.

Even though the movie was full of gore from beginning to end the story was till played out perfectly. This movie is very good and I would recommend it to anyone over the age of 17, just don't let your little kids watch it or they will not be able to fall asleep at night.

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Posted jul 22, 2007 2:10 pm pt

delta_116326

-1

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lots of unnessesary gore.

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Posted jun 15, 2007 10:51 pm pt

viveckvivu

-1

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I didnt expect this! I thought this movie was good, but not as great as I expected. This is one of the most violent movies I have ever seen! Its filled with blood from starting to end! But there were some scenes which were good to see. Like the...
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I didnt expect this! I thought this movie was good, but not as great as I expected. This is one of the most violent movies I have ever seen! Its filled with blood from starting to end! But there were some scenes which were good to see. Like the whole scene before the waterfall!

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Posted jun 8, 2007 2:35 pm pt

alichino

-1

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I was expecting a deeper story, especially when the film opens with that quote about nations destroying themselves within.
Instead you get a very basic story about survival, escape, and...oh, wait, that's it. The nations involved are never...
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I was expecting a deeper story, especially when the film opens with that quote about nations destroying themselves within.
Instead you get a very basic story about survival, escape, and...oh, wait, that's it. The nations involved are never exposed. The general understanding of the Aztecs in relation to the surrounding cultures and the eventual destruction at the hands of the Spanish, not even looked at. Nothing of significance is even looked at in this movie.
Oh, I'm sorry, one very important ideology is exposed: Love (and by way faith). But this is the oldest story in the history of story telling. The acting is superb and it is the acting that I'm giving stars here. I want that to be clear. The acting is so well done that it rates all by itself against the obvious story and pretty straight forward cinematography. I was moved by every character in this movie. Probably because I had to read the subtitles not having the foggiest notion how to speak "Mayan" or what ever they were speaking.
I have to leave a special note on the use of Digital film: please don't. Two reasons: One Slow motion sucks in Digital format, it has that choppy feel to it. Because all they are really doing is slowing the action down, when with analog film they are speeding up the film going through the camera, more frames, slower the action. Much smoother, much cleaner. Reason two: digital blur!!! Digital blurs look fake and need to be corrected with CGI to be made more natural. This weird blurring effect distracts the eye, because it's unusual and doesn't fit into the natural movement of things.

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Posted jun 4, 2007 3:40 am pt

marolia

-1

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Mel Gibson's best film. Great action and very brutal. It's a great Adventure film, which thrill you throughout the film.

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Posted jun 2, 2007 3:34 am pt

rockin01

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A brilliant work! This one clicks on all cylinders: excellent script, eye-popping cinematography, unbelievable makeup, vibrant set design, incredibly naturalistic acting, and of course, expert directing and production.

This story...
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A brilliant work! This one clicks on all cylinders: excellent script, eye-popping cinematography, unbelievable makeup, vibrant set design, incredibly naturalistic acting, and of course, expert directing and production.

This story engages from the first frame until the last, and the pulse-pounding action scenes had me literally on the edge of my seat. This is epic movie-making of the first order. Cecil B. DeMille woulda been proud...

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Posted may 26, 2007 1:15 pm pt

• [+] Variety
  
  100
  Mel Gibson is always good for a surprise, and his latest is that Apocalypto is a remarkable film. Set in the waning days of the Mayan civilization, the picture provides a trip to a place one's never been before, offering hitherto unseen sights of exceptional vividness and power.

  by Todd McCarthy | Read Full Review »
• [+] LA Weekly
  
  100
  For those of us who prefer to judge Gibson solely in terms of his art, the movie is a virtuosic piece of action cinema -- particularly in its second half...And while there has been no shortage of recent films that decry the horrors of war and man's inhumanity to his fellow man, I know of none other quite this sickeningly powerful.

  by Scott Foundas | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Reader
  
  100
  The production design is superb, and the actors deliver their dialogue in subtitled Yucatecan Maya, but despite all the anthropological drag, this is really just a crackerjack Saturday-afternoon serial.

  by J.R. Jones | Read Full Review »
• [+] Seattle Post-Intelligencer
  
  91
  For all its excesses, it's an absorbing, disturbing, savagely beautiful "trip" movie, and an extraordinary -- perhaps even outrageous -- personal vision of the one A-list filmmaker who truly deserves the adjective "maverick."

  by William Arnold | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  90
  Gibson may not be much of a deep thinker, but he's a heck of a storyteller. Apocalypto turns out to be not a case of Montezuma's revenge but of Gibson's: It's something entirely unexpected, a sinewy, taut poem of action.

  by Stephen Hunter | Read Full Review »
• [+] Rolling Stone
  
  88
  Gibson has made a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty.

  by Peter Travers | Read Full Review »
• [+] TV Guide
  
  88
  Barbarously beautiful and gut-wrenchingly (literally) violent, it's a mesmerizing vision of the past refracted through the dark obsessions of the present.

  by Maitland McDonagh | Read Full Review »
• [+] Miami Herald
  
  88
  Awe-inspiring and harrowing, vile and beautiful, as wild and mesmerizing as the Mexican jungle in which it is filmed and one of the most relentlessly thrilling films of the year.

  by Connie Ogle | Read Full Review »
• [+] Philadelphia Inquirer
  
  88
  The heart of the matter - and the viscera - is the action, and one man's determination to survive. Apocalypto is primal.

  by Steven Rea | Read Full Review »
• [+] ReelViews
  
  88
  The best thing I can say about Apocalypto is that, despite belonging to an overpopulated genre, it's unlike any other movie to reach theaters this year and, because it is as visual an experience as it is visceral, it is best seen on a large screen.

  by James Berardinelli | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Onion (A.V. Club)
  
  83
  The whole film is too reliant on action-movie cuts and zooms, plus James Horner's insistent score, but it's beautifully rendered and convincingly exciting.

  by Tasha Robinson | Read Full Review »
• [+] Wall Street Journal
  
  80
  By the end I felt sure it was the most obsessively, graphically violent film I'd ever seen, but equally sure that Apocalypto is a visionary work with its own wild integrity. And absolutely, positively convinced that seeing it once is enough for one lifetime.

  by Joe Morgenstern | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Hollywood Reporter
  
  80
  The guy knows how to make a heart-pounding movie; he just happens to be a cinematic sadist.

  by Kirk Honeycutt | Read Full Review »
• [+] Newsweek
  
  80
  The film is mostly successful in transporting the viewer to another age: the costumes, the body markings, the fierce Mayan masks, all feel right. And keeping the dialogue in subtitles was a smart move. Even better are the faces, which never fail to fascinate. But for all the anthropological research that went into the movie, what is Apocalypto trying to say?

  by David Ansen | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Magazine
  
  80
  Apocalypto turns into the best "Rambo" movie ever made. The worrisome part is that Gibson doesn't think he's making a boneheaded action picture. For him, torture and vengeance are the way of the world. This is Gibsonian metaphysics.

  by David Edelstein | Read Full Review »