But Jaguar Paw escapes and flees homeward (the well in which he hid his family has an unfortunate tendency to flood when it rains) with a band of homicidal enforcers hot on his tail. The captives are marched to a Mayan metropolis (one of the more persuasive visions of Hell ever committed to celluloid) to be sacrificed to the gods. Those not killed are taken as slaves-including Jaguar Paw, though not before he hides his pregnant wife and toddler son in a well. Indeed, one could skip the dialogue altogether and miss very little of the story: Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is a member of a peaceful, Edenic tribe (as long as you're not a tapir) whose village is attacked by a raiding party that bears a suspicious resemblance to refugees from The Road Warrior. It's an experiment that works better than Gibson's earlier foray into biblical Aramaic, for, unlike Jesus and his persecuters, the protagonists of Apocalypto are men (mostly) of action rather than words.

Set in the jungles of Central America, Apocalypto is a historic (or prehistoric) epic in spoken Mayan with English subtitles. A primitive fable of victimhood and vengeance, enslavement and escape, Apocalypto is a minor masterpiece of cinematic bravado. But while his latest film, Apocalypto, may not tell us much about the latter two categories, it confirms that, under the right circumstances, he is indeed a fiercely talented director. But it was still a long and lonely decade to be a Mel hater before The Passion of the Christ and the passion of the drunk-driving anti-Semite made it something approaching conventional wisdom.Īll of which is to say that I am not a person inclined to give Mel Gibson the benefit of the doubt as a director, actor, or human being. Gibson's thuggish preening was confirmed by his next film, Ransom, in which we were expected to applaud him for being the Worst Parent of All Time. Yes, the battle scenes were remarkable, even revelatory but they could hardly compensate for the vainest self-directed performance ever by someone not named 'Barbra Streisand,' and for the movie's vicious, gratuitous homophobia. I was tiring a bit of his smug machismo by the time he started grinding out Lethal Weapons, but it was Braveheart that really put me over the edge.

In the early going, I liked him in Mad Max and in Gallipoli. I hated Mel Gibson long before hating Mel Gibson was cool.

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