Gibson is still seeking life amid death, but the balance is off.
Comment
12/08/06
Apocalypto (2006)
64
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:182
Fresh:117
Rotten:65
Average Rating:6.3/10
Consensus: Apocalypto is a brilliantly filmed, if mercilessly bloody, examination of a once great civilization.
Theatrical Release:05-01-2007
Synopsis: Mel Gibson (BRAVEHEART, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST) tackles the downfall of Mayan civilization in his latest turn as writer/director. Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) and his fellow villagers lead a... [More]
Starring: Dalia Hernandez, Mayra Serbulo, Gerardo Taracena, Raoul Trujillo
Director: Mel Gibson
Reviews for Apocalypto
121 - 140 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Bizarre, almost unique in its mixture of over-the-top bloodletting, ambitious storytelling, and lowbrow slapstick humor.
12/08/06
This is Gibson's bloodlust pure and unfiltered, and it's depressing to sit and watch him make the same film for the third time in a row.
12/07/06
Gibson's film entertains without leaving the stronger impression of scope it had the intention and potential to do.
12/07/06
The whole thing is absorbing, first as a glimpse into a lost culture, then as a traditional Good Guy Hunted by Bad Guys film.
12/07/06
What's truly challenging about it is the ironic displacement of anyone's God as the all-knowing presence in the face of our fellow man constantly preaching the myths as the key to survival.
12/07/06
Had Gibson followed the cue of other less self-important variations of The Most Dangerous Game, and cut to the chase more quickly, Apocalypto would have been a far more satisfying experience.
12/07/06
...feels like a phenomenal step backwards for the thoroughly talented filmmaker.
12/07/06
a borderline movie stuck with a remarkably difficult marketing problem and lots of bloody violence.
12/07/06
The buzz is wrong. Apocalypto is unquestionably the most reprehensible, brain-dead and offensive movie I've seen all year, and this year has been a doozy.
12/07/06
You're not likely to forget the experience, but one can't help but wonder who would want to go through it in the first place.
12/07/06
[A] thrilling tale of survival and love and dedication in a world we've never seen on film, produced with a lavish respect for and attention to honoring that world...
12/07/06
suffers the carte blanche excesses of a successful director who believes he's earned the right not to be told "no."
12/07/06
The simplistic premise serves the film fine in terms of action and awe-inspiring moments, but it does next to nothing when it comes to historical value -- something I was hoping for, even in the slightest.
12/07/06
...director Mel Gibson puts all his psychoses on screen and comes out an auteur, a director of distinctive vision if troubled mind.
12/07/06
Perhaps Gibson is trying to shock us into absorbing the torment and severity of man's inhumanity to man. The tragedy is that the film has the opposite effect: As we are bombarded by savagery, we become inured to it.
12/07/06
As in The Passion of the Christ, Gibson's empathy extends only as far as feeling his characters' pain...It is, however, a rip-roaring, ultraviolent action picture.
12/07/06
For all the film's beauty and mythic grandeur, it's the fetishistic fascination with gore that stays in your head and distracts from almost everything else the movie tries to do.
12/07/06
Apocalypto isn't forgotten quite so easily as your average nightmare, but there isn't much in it worth remembering, either.
12/07/06
Praising the movie's craftsmanship seems less urgent than communicating the overwhelming experience of watching it: the clammy, claustrophobic dread of being trapped in a torture chamber.
12/07/06
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