Amoeba Music

It's not easy to heap praise on Mel Gibson. His apparent personal conduct and views are completely unappealing and, worse, totally offensive. On screen Gibson started out with a bang in the Mad Max films and was entertaining in the first Lethal Weapon movie, but otherwise his performances and choices of roles have not been very memorable. As a director, I couldn’t slog through his The Passion of the Christ; Man Without A Face was trite; and Braveheart was an overrated piece of hokum. All that aside, it’s easy to declare that his Mayan action adventure film, Apocalypto, is pretty damn brilliant, maybe even a sorta-whacked out masterpiece.

The film takes place in 16th century Central America near the end of the Mayan period, just before the arrival of the Spanish. It’s shot completely in the Yucatan Maya language with unknowns and non-actors, indigenous North Americans. In some ways the film is actually one long, exciting, and very brutal chase scene. Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), low on his tribe's totem pole, witnesses his tribe being slaughtered and enslaved. He hides his wife, Seven (Dalia Hernandez), and child and goes on an adventure worthy of Playstation. After killing of some of the raiders he is captured by the psychotic Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo) and led to the Mayan city, a much more advanced and destructive place than anything the young villager had experienced before. Jaguar Paw manages to escape after much horrific torture and human sacrifices, and is chased as he tries to get back to save his family. It’s a delirious obstacle death course of horror, as he has to make his way through the jungle using all his survival skills to outwit his captors.

George Miller’s Australian gem, The Road Warrior, is hailed by most as one of the greatest action films of all time, especially since it’s a pre-CGI, stunt and stunt driver, driven thrill ride. Its vision of the post apocalyptic future has been ripped off as much as any film, usually badly (1990: The Bronx Warriors, Resident Evil, Doomsday, etc). It has echoes of Kurosawa’s early samurai films as well as John Ford’s cowboys or cavalry dramas. Here, the fort holds oil production so precious for driving around in your jacked-up automobiles; instead of Indians the attackers are mohawked punked-out brutes. This fairly low budget flick looks and feels like a big Hollywood spectacle (coming at the end of Australia’s golden age of stuntploitation films. See the wonderful documentary Not Quite Hollywood for more on this fascinating era).

The film is a sequel to the ultra low-budget Mad Max (in most of the world The Road Warrior was titled Mad Max 2). Mad Max got some mild play in the States but the strong accents were ridiculously dubbed with what sound like cartoon voice-over actors. The first one takes place "A Few Years From Now...” when the world has not fallen apart but seems to be on the brink and chaos rules. The high-speed police patrol seems to work as its own gang, taking on psychos and bikers. Max (Mel Gibson), a tough cop, is also a tender family man, and when a motorcycle gang kills his wife and child, he takes out his vengeance on them.