Until now, Gibson has shown enough restraint to keep the story engrossing and believable. Many of Jaguar Paw's kin are slain, and he and others are captured and led on a forced march, but not before he manages to stash his wife and son away in a safe but temporary hiding place. Then invaders from the big city show up, including the fierce warrior leader Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo) and the sadistic Snake Ink (Rodolfo Palacios), who, with their tattoos, facial ornaments and other accouterments, look like refugees from Gibson's "The Road Warrior." We see wonderful glimpses of Jaguar Paw's tenderness toward his pregnant wife (Dalia Hernandez) and their young son, as well as moments of the community's lust for life and laughter, most notably centered on the character of the town's well-meaning oaf Blunted (Jonathan Brewer). Great warmth, fraternity, compassion and sly humor underlie this little society, where Gibson's hero Jaguar Paw (played with fiery fortitude by American Indian Rudy Youngblood) lives surrounded by friends and family.ĢThey're like children of paradise, taking what they need from their surroundings and leaving the rest, dwelling in harmony with nature.
If harsh jungle existence can be idyllic, that's what life is for the small village Gibson introduces us to in the movie's marvelous opening act, a group of hunter-gatherers living on the fringes of the great Mayan civilization 500 years ago. The language is simple and direct, and if you miss a subtitle or two, you won't suffer a moment's confusion as to what's happening. In the vein of the dead languages featured in "The Passion," Gibson, who co-wrote the "Apocalypto" screenplay with Farhad Safinia, has his cast of unknowns talking in Yucatec Maya, spoken today only in the Yucatan Peninsula.Īlso like "The Passion," "Apocalypto" is a visual story - long stretches told through pictures, sound effects and music, without need of dialogue.
At least no one can call Gibson a Jew hater for "Apocalypto." Given the furor over "The Passion," whose critics worried that it might stoke anti-Semitism, and Gibson's drunken driving arrest and anti-Semitic ramblings last summer, it's fortuitous for him that his next film was something about as far removed from all that as possible. Then again, Gibson's Martin Riggs survived about a thousand-and-one bullets at the end of "Lethal Weapon 2" and lived to fight again in two more sequels. The suffering the character goes through is not unlike the scourging of Christ. Gibson also strains credulity with his main character's Christlike ability to survive what look to be fatal, or at least incapacitating, piercings by arrows. The blood and gore become so extreme that they provoke titters of ridicule, undermining a simple, stirring story of family devotion as a man races from vile captors to return home and rescue his pregnant wife and their son. Does Gibson need to repeatedly show us lopped-off heads bouncing like coconuts down the towering stairs of a pyramid to prove it? Not so much.