Film Review: Apocalypto (2006)

I need to revised my top 10 films of 2006 because this film would rank high on that list (though it shan't disturbed the top 2 positions - Pan's Labyrinth and The Departed). Mel Gibson was an eccentric character as an actor, director, and producer. Not my favourite, but he was literally everywhere. He was in a warm felt rom-com film, his geeky adventurer character was also one of my favourite, he's in one of my favourite trilogy quadrology inter-racial cop stories, and i also liked his Payback. That was him as an actor. As a director, Braveheart blew me apart as one of the earliest films that i've seen (with earnest) on the beginning of my journey in the path of film voyeur. As a producer and director, he had a huge, a huge, a huge financial success with his The Passion of the Christ. He must've been one of the richest man in the world when the The Passion of the Christ hit the theater. His followup (as a director, producer, and writer) to that film was another film that entirely devoid of English language dialog.

Apocalypto told about the beginning of the end of Mayan Empire. But, the main story of this film was the raging between one powerful tribe with the lesser tribes. This powerful tribe raids the villages, captured the citizens (alive, is possible) to be sacrificed in an high altar. This film was released by Disney. But there is nothing Disney-ish in this film. The film was bloody, brutal, and violent. And i love it. I can't tell you more about the main plot lest i would ruin your experience. All i can say is that the film was concluded with one of the most intense lengthy chase scene.

The film was (as with most film) clearly divided into three segments. The first segment begin slowly but effectively as we're introduced with the protagonist, and i'm sure that most of us would be effectively bond with him before the first segment ends. The second segment (the conflict) introduces us to the two main antagonist, also went effective as we wanted to see these two dead in the hand of our hero. Probably we wanted to see the dead of one of them more than the other, well, you get the point, we wanted to see them dead anyway. And the third segment as i told you, one of the most intense chase scene.

I had only one objection regarding this film, that the violences were most of the time happened off-screen. Understandably since this is not the film that focused on brutality. But, if we're talking about uncivilized ancient tribes, we should have seen more violence. However, there were some hinted off-screen tortures, rapes, or killings that made my imagination plays wildly which proofed that the approach taken by Mr.Gibson to shows the violent was effective.

All in all, this film is not for everyone, this film is a forceful, intense, and violent film which would please an action/adventure film fan. I really need to see this film in big screen.

My Rating: **** / ****