[AGL] Mel Gibson makes me wanna puke

[Jon Ford]

Gerry-- according to Rotten Tomatoes, about 60% of popular(newspaper and 
internet) reviewers liked it, the rest did not. Here's a sample from The San 
Diego Union-Tribune:

MOVIE REVIEW
In warm blood: Mel's murder spree

By David Elliott
MOVIE CRITIC

December 8, 2006

“Apocalypto” is a big load of sado. It's as if Mel Gibson wants every man in 
the audience to feel like a weakling and every woman to fear being raped.


Everyone upset about Gibson's going into a trashy, DUI rant against Jews 
(July 28) should also worry about his directing movies that spew violence at 
millions (including youths via DVDs). “Braveheart” became a carnage epic. 
“The Passion of the Christ” treated Jesus as a tortured slab of meat 
(“reverently” observed). And “Apocalypto” offers pre-Columbian Mexico as a 
grotesque trail of tears and blood.

For a story stuck at the “Perils of Pauline” level, Gibson provides a 
relatively benign opening. In a tribe of jungle hunters, there is quaint 
macho stuff about tapir testicles as virility potions, and then a rollicking 
mother-in-law gag (ah, the primal roots of comedy).

Then Gibson, as director and main writer, cranks it up. A more “advanced” 
tribe of ferocious sadists destroys the jungle village, caving in skulls, 
raping or killing women, enslaving survivors and leaving most of the kids to 
die. Hell has begun in this Touchstone (yep, Disney) release.

The lithe Jaguar Paw, touchingly acted by Rudy Youngblood, is hauled with 
other slave booty on a grisly trek to a Mayan city, where a few pyramids 
anchor what seems a liquored and drugged fiesta of street turmoil and ritual 
sacrifices. There is panic due to fading crops and a plague.

The actors speak only the native language, subtitled. This has all the 
authenticity value of filming “Cleopatra” in hieroglyphics (or Gibson's 
“Passion” in Aramaic, as it was).

Jaguar Paw is taken on top of the bloody pyramid for a heart-rip. But there 
comes celestial intervention (not the “Passion” sort), and after a gantlet 
of brutalities, he flees back to the jungle. In pursuit is a running squad 
of 16th-century virtual Nazis, led by a huge brute who looks not very Indian 
(a good many of the “pure” natives look racially mixed, and not all have the 
classic Mayan features still seen in much of Mexico).

The jungle is tremendously well-photographed, and there is a swell waterfall 
scene. But this is the kind of saga where a tottering old Indian wasted by 
disease is told to “die like a man.” And in which Gibson, whose visceral 
vision seems pathological, dwells on ripped-out hearts, crushed heads, 
impalings, a snake bite to the neck, a hornet attack, a dying pig, a face 
ripped apart by a jaguar. Plus “sensitive” cuts to the fate of Jaguar Paw's 
child and pregnant wife.

Gibson is not making an exotic yarn like “Kings of the Sun,” a 1963 romp in 
which Yul Brynner and George Chakiris played Mayan war hunks. He pushes past 
the grisly frontier brutalities of “Black Robe” and “The Last of the 
Mohicans,” using the adrenaline of “Predator” and “The Naked Prey.” Hey, 
he's being Mel, in hell.

Nobody needs to get pumped on La Raza pride from this odious ordeal. Gibson 
makes you sick about basic humanity. For Gibson, the Maya live entirely 
under the shadow of death, and knowing what we do about his religious 
beliefs, the story subtext is clear: Only Christianity will upgrade the 
Indians from their bestial lives.

The finish even brings a cross, but by then our nerves have been chopped 
into Gibson giblets. Uplift barely registers. That Gibson has no regard for 
Meso-American cultural achievements, forever ended by the vast die-offs from 
disease and forced labor brought by the Spanish invasion, suits his juvenile 
sadist's view of a demented but “manly” world.


>From: "Gerry" <mesmo at gilanet.com>

>Reply-To: survivors' reminiscences about Austin Ghetto Daze in the 

>60s<austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>

>To: "survivors' reminiscences about Austin Ghetto Daze in the 

>60s"<austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>

>Subject: Re: [AGL] Mel Gibson makes me wanna puke

>Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2006 11:41:34 -0700

>

>I couldn't sit through the Christ flick, too unnecessarily gory for me. A 

>minute or two of torture can make they point as well as 10 or 15 minutes. I 

>think Mel is ill. Will not try to sit through another of his needlessly 

>brutal flicks. BTW not all the reviewers are so crazy about it.

>G

>   ----- Original Message -----

>   From: Fontaine Maverick

>   To: survivors' reminiscences about Austin Ghetto Daze in the 60s

>   Sent: Sunday, December 10, 2006 9:05 AM

>   Subject: [AGL] Mel Gibson makes me wanna puke

>

>

>   A disclaimer about my personal bias: Gibson is on my list of "10 famous 

>people I love to hate".

>   Friday's Statesman had not only a review by Chris Garcia, but an 

>interview with a professor of Mayan studies, on the new film, "Apocalypto" 

>- she said that the film was despicable because it portrayed the Mayans as 

>brutal, left out all of their accomplishments, was full of inaccuracies, 

>and brought the Spanish catholics in at the end as saviours! It bugs me 

>that many of the reviewers around the country are gaga over it.

>

>   

>http://www.statesman.com/search/content/shared/movies/stories/2006/12/history.html

>

>   and here is Garcia's review:

>

>   Gore meets grandeur for a weird mix

>   By Chris Garcia

>   Austin American Statesman

>

>

>

>   "Apocalypto" is the best horror movie of the year. It's a sadistically, 

>sociopathically violent spectacle that devolves from gripping action film 

>to a relentless phantasmagoria of graphic carnage that hammers you with 

>gory image after gory image — blood, guts, brains, heads, limbs — in the 

>service of message that's at best murky.>>>>

>

>   

>http://www.austin360.com/movies/movies/etc/getCriticReview.jspd?criticReviewId=728


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