Call it a vanity project, or a self indulgent ego push, but no matter how you slice it, there's really little arguing that Mel Gibson's unusual jungle adventure film, Apocalypto, is an exciting and well made ultra-violent adrenaline rush. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, and it's not particularly deep, but it's entertaining, it's gory and it's fun. Think of it more as an exploitation film made with a big fat budget than an art picture and you'll find yourself in the right ballpark at least - this is basically a chase movie with really nice cinematography.

A Mayan tribesman named Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) and a few of his cohorts are wandering around their slice of the jungle when they run into a rather intimidating group of people from an unfamiliar tribe. These strangers move quickly through the area and Jaguar Paw and his friends are left wondering what exactly is going on here. Unfortunately for them, they find out the hard way when those same strangers show up and slaughter a bunch of people in Jaguar Paw's village. Before it all hits the fan, however, he manages to hide his pregnant wife and his small son away at the bottom of a pit. The rest of the surviving villagers, Jaguar Pay included, are rounded up and marched off to a city where Mayan priests begin sacrificing them to appease what they believe to be an angry god.

Soon, a full blown solar eclipse occurs and the people who were going to be sacrificed are instead essentially re-routed to a big arena where they're made to dodge various arrows and weapons and other assorted craziness. Jaguar Paw sees his chance to escape, and he takes it, hoping to make it back to the village that was once his home so that he can save his wife and son from certain death.

Short on plot but filled with plenty of detail and gorgeous cinematography, Apocalypto is not a deep film. It's possible to read things into it and enjoy it for more than what it offers on the surface, but really, it's an action movie set in the jungle that is essentially built around one big chase scene. Amazingly enough, it actually works quite well. The film is very well paced so that even at two hours and fifteen minutes in length it moves at a good clip, never overstaying its welcome. Violence junkies will much to appreciate about the picture as well. Gibson, never one to shy away from cinematic bloodshed, keeps the red stuff flowing particularly during a few very intense key scenes. It's all completely over the top and as gratuitous as any other mainstream Hollywood production you can think of but somehow it fits - this is very much a 'savage world' we're drawn into, where life is cheap and problems are solved with violence.

Alongside the action set pieces, we're also given an interesting and likely fairly accurate look at Mayan civilization. There's a lot of attention paid to small details, one need only watch closely as the camera pans through the village or through the city to see the extras and the sets all completely decked out in what we can probably fairly rightly assume is close to authentic detail. This, coupled with the fantastic camera work and fairly riveting score, give Apocalypto an epic feel that makes the movie seem more original and more important than it actually is. Gibson isn't really doing anything new with the movie. Sure, it's performed entirely in Mayan and all that good stuff but it's more or less The Most Dangerous Game with better production values and a lot more bloodshed. That's not a bad thing - he makes it work and does a great job with it - but the movie is what it is, and that's really just simple and exciting entertainment.

Video:

Apocalypto looks excellent in this 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. Aside from some very slight edge enhancement which is only obvious in a few scenes, there's really not much to complain about here at all. Color reproduction is fantastic with plenty of lush greens and bloody reds used in the compositions and both the detail levels in the foreground and the background of the image look very sharp. Brightness and contrast seem fine and there are no problems at all with mpeg compression artifacts to report. Aliasing is held firmly in check and there are no issues with dirt, debris or print damage anywhere at all.