+ 2nd Best Movie of the Year
+ Best Epic of the Year + Best American Movie of the Year + Best Adventure Movie of the Year + Best Chase Movie of the Year
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| The mysterious and powerful poster for Mel Gibson's Apocalypto |
New-Yorker master co-writer/director Mel Gibson (Hacksaw Ridge (2016)) seems to pull off an impossible job with his fourth feature directorial effort, Apocalypto, which he co-wrote with Farhad Safinia (The Professor and the Madman (2017) writer-director):
Set in the Mayan culture just before the fatal coming of the Spaniards around year 1511, a young man, Jaguar Paw, must fight for his life and those of his wife and unborn child, as an outside peril destroys his village.
Apocalypto presents this story in a hyper-energetic, virtuoso adventure epic, which treads virgin ground with confidence and persuasion and tells a story of fierce struggle for survival in the context of a doomed civilization. Setting a broadly targeting chase adventure in an exclusively indigenous environment with minimal use of CGI and characters exclusively speaking an extinct language (an approximation of the Yucatec Maya language) had not been attempted before Gibson's daring film.
Rudy Youngblood (Wind Walkers (2015)) brilliantly portrays our hero Jaguar Paw, a tremendously demanding and extremely physically taxing role.
A great part of the film's ingenuity is to make the entire story unfold before the real outsiders, the Europeans, came crashing down upon the Americas. What an adventure it is, and what an accomplishment, to seemingly bring back to life an extinct culture on screens the world over for a couple of hours of edge-of-your-seat, marvelous entertainment.
Gibson's keen eye for faces and cinematic thrills; an action-packed script that seems much like an endless, ever-exciting chase, (which is also the way it was consciously designed); stunning images crafted by great Aussie cinematographer Dean Semler (Last Action Hero (1993)), and a thundering score by James Horner (Avatar (2009)), based mostly on various exotic instruments, all contribute in making Apocalypto work flawlessly in every department.
The incredible story inflicts constant shivers and goosebumps and never turns sentimental. The film works like a constant, gripping bombardment of the senses that reconfirms Gibson's position as a master storyteller, who is intimately familiar with the stuff that myths are made of, as well as an extraordinary communicator. Its daunting uniqueness, perhaps, is what prevented it from being attempted copied in the subsequent years; Roland Emmerich's awful 10,000 BC (2008) is the only major film that seems directly inspired by Apocalypto.
Apocalypto is a violent, masterful and exhilarating ride that reinvented and broadened what an action film can be.
Related posts:
Mel Gibson: 2016 in films - according to Film Excess
Hacksaw Ridge (2016) - Gibson's intense, humbling WWII epic
The Expendables 3 (2014) - Unique, bizarre, largely entertaining third action fireball (actor)
Get the Gringo/How I Spent My Summer Vacation (2012) - Mexico is just a little merrier with Mel Gibson (co-producer/co-writer/actor)
The Beaver (2011) - Odd depression-dramedy with great stars - for the open-minded (actor)
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Top 10: The best action movies and TV-series reviewed by Film Excess to date
Top 10: The best big hit movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Listen to 4 minutes of the film's soundtrack while enjoying images from the film here
Cost: 40 mil. $
Box office: 120.6 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 3.01 times its cost)
[Apocalypto was released December 8 (North America) and runs 138 minutes. Safinia worked as an assistant on Gibson's previous film, The Passion of the Christ (2004). They developed the film as a chase action adventure and did much research into the Maya culture and civilization. The film was shot digitally in Mexico from November 2005 - July 2006, including in a period where massive floods displaced 1 mil. people in Mexico. The cast is made up of native amateur actors. The film moves the Mayan collapse up about 600 years so as to collide with the arrival of the Spaniards, and its portrayal of their culture is contested. The release was pushed from July due to its prolonged shoot, and it was released about 6 months after Gibson was embroiled in scandal, when he slurred anti-Semitic insults at an officer during his arrest for DUI. Still, distributor Disney gave it a broad release based on strong reaction at test screenings and belief in the film. The film opened #1 to a 15 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its 2nd week and grossed 50.8 mil. $ (42.1 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Italy with 8.6 mil. $ (7.1 %) and the UK with 8 mil. $ (6.6 %). It additionally made in excess of 28.2 mil. $ on video sales in North America, which, if added into its gross, changes it to a big hit. The film was hailed by many filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee and Robert Duvall. It was nominated for 3 Oscars: Best Makeup (lost to Pan's Labyrinth), Best Sound Mixing (lost to Dreamgirls) and Best Sound Editing (lost to Letters from Iwo Jima). It was nominated for a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and some other awards. Gibson returned with Hacksaw Ridge (2016). Youngblood returned in Beatdown (2010). Apocalypto is fresh at 65 % with a 6.33/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Apocalypto ?
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