Shot with digital camera on location in Mexico, Mel Gibson has created a visually stunning action/adventure epic that although has divided many with its historical accuracy, has spared no expense in bringing life to a world before European colonization.
Ignore Apocalypto's symbolic hubbub and instead view it for Gibson's perverse sense of entertainment. His passionate spectacle of human destruction and doom packs a terrific visceral punch.
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.
Damn if the movie, through Mel's sheer determination, doesn't almost turn from a fight-n-flight gore fest into a moving meditation on a civilisation in the throes of decline. Almost.
New Yorker
December 11, 2006
[Gibson] has learned how to tell a tale, and to raise a pulse in the telling. You have to admire that basic gift, uncommon as it is in Hollywood these days, though equally you have to ask what obsessions goad it on.
