Apocalypto (2006)
8/10
Amazing to watch… Brutally brilliant!
20 August 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" is not a normal movie but a big make-up movie…

From the moment the film starts to the moment it ends you feel you are transported into the ancient Mayan civilization, seeing full body tattoos, body art, multiple piercing and jewelry… It is a very exciting motion picture to look at, so strange to watch… It has the esthetic that began to appeal and it fills you with wonder…

Our hero Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is a cunning hunter whose father requests him not to tell of what he saw in forest today… He is warned to strike fear from his heart and not to bring it into the village…His wife, Seven (Dalia Hernandez) is pregnant, and their small son, Turtles Run (Carlos Emilio Baez), live modestly in a village surrounded by a tranquil rain forest...

After a night of frivolity, the peaceful existence of this small community of hunters collapses when savage outsiders begin torching and burning everything in sight killing most and taking away dozens left…

Going undetected, Jaguar Paw hides his wife and child in a deep, waterless well promising to return when the attack has passed… However when he is captured by his fearsome aggressors, he is tied to a pole and marched with his friends and fellow villagers to a forsaken land, stone-built, where the earth bleeds…

A fortuitous switch provides Jaguar Paw with an unexpected opportunity to escape and get back to his family in peril… But for that he has to make his way home through a killing field and a dangerous jungle, racing against sadistic captors hot on his trail…

"Apocalypto" transports the viewers to a strange and unreachable world, to a civilization in decline, to an infernal vision of a city and its inhabitants, to shocking images of human barbarism which has always existed throughout the ages
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