Review: Apocalypto

UK release date: 5th January

At first sight, writer/director Mel Gibson’s Mayan epic seems intimidating. It’s 140 minutes long, has subtitled Yucatan dialogue and is set in pre-Spanish Mexico. Yet despite appearances it’s no pretentious arthouse film but a thrilling chase movie in which Mayan warrior Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is pursued through the jungle by a vicious rival tribe eager to use him as a blood sacrifice.

Stocking up on sadistic violence, Gibson matches The Passion of the Christ‘s bloodsoaked tableaux with a catalogue of astonishingly gory beheadings and impalements, all set against the forbidding backdrop of Mayan pyramids and lush tropical undergrowth. He directs the set pieces with style, creating an exciting, exhausting action adventure that’s like a strangely compelling hybrid of Mayan mythology, 1980s video nasty Cannibal Holocaust and Tarzan.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 18
Running time 138mins

Review by Jamie Russell

News: Mel Gibson

Though still largely persona non grata in Hollywood for his anti-semitic and sexist outburst when arrested for drunk driving back in the summer, this week’s Apocalypto has nonetheless seen Mel Gibson somewhat rehabilitated – artistically, if not personally, as it has seen him pick up a smattering of award nominations despite his current unpopularity.

He currently has no other directing projects in the works, but does have a brace of movies as actor set for a 2008 release, both of which he will doubtless hope can regain him some of the public’s affection.

He will be starring in the undercover cop drama Under and Alone for Buffalo Soldiers director Gregor Jordan (taking over the project from King Arthur‘s Antoine Fuqua) as the real life Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives officer Billy Queen, whose infiltration of the notorious Mongols Motorcycle Club (a rival to the better-known Hell’s Angels) led to more than three dozen arrests on drugs and firearms charges back in 2000. He’s also set to re-team with Lethal Weapon series director Richard Donner for Sam and George as – wait for it – a man convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, who reunites with an old friend to rebuild his shattered life. Art immitating life as Gibson tries to rebuild his reputation? Who can say?