Apocalypto Film Review
The bloodiest 139 minutes you could spend outside of watching Scarface, Reservoir Dogs and Saw, while sticking your hand in a blender.
How many ways are there to kill, maim, and generally inflict suffering on a living creature? Mel Gibson knows and, for the price of a cinema ticket, he'll show you all of them. If there is a message of anthropological significance to be gleaned from Apocalypto, it's somewhat muffled by the gloves-off sensory assault that is possibly the bloodiest 139 minutes you could spend outside of watching Scarface, Reservoir Dogs and Saw on split-screen, whilst sticking your hand in a switched-on blender. That this ancient society was brutal is no bombshell, and Apocalypto's painstaking reconstruction of every vein slashed and organ removed, fronted by a flimsy quest narrative, has the effect of reducing an entire civilisation to slasher flick fodder with an uncomfortable air of colonial voyeurism. If, however, you feel that witnessing a few sacrificial beheadings is what has been missing from your life, go and see Apocalypto. Just don't expect to learn anything. [Lindsay West]