Director:
Studio: Icon Home Entertainment
Genre: Action & Adventure
Theatrical:   Starring:
Rated: Suitable for 18 years and over
Summary: I had my doubts about seeing this movie because I had heard it was so bloody and violent, but after watching it, I am glad I did. Many other reviewers have described the movie, so I won't bore you with that, I'll just offer some general impressions.



The opening scenes are designed, I think, to engage the sympathy of the viewer for the forest tribe. While it might be difficult for many people to feel sympathy for pre-Colombian natives who are violent and even savage, I think Gibson did a good job on this part. We accompany the men on a hunt, see that they engage in typical "male bonding" behavior, see that they have mother-in-law problems, love and cherish their children, and so on.



More than that, during the hunting scene, we see something else: a warning given that was ignored, shoved under the rug. Had that warning of fear been heeded, preparations made to resist the impending terror, there might have been less destruction. That's a good object lesson for us even today.



The scenes of the Mayan city were especially helpful to me. I have been to Mexico and have studied Mayan ruins first hand. They left me feeling very disturbed; I could NOT imagine what kind of culture would create such savage and even ugly art. I don't mean ugly in the sense that it was badly done, not that at all. But the "soul" revealed in Mayan art is truly horrifying.



Mel Gibson gave this art a background for me that finally helped me to make sense of it.



I noticed something else: all the savagery, body pierciings, horrible and ugly hairdos of the women, and the general behavior of the culture reminded me of U.S. society over the past 10 years or so. I know that seems a bit over-the-top, but I have never been able to understand why attractive people would go so far out of their way to make themselves ugly with hair that looks like its been cut with a dull lawnmower, body piercings, wearing clothes that look like slave gear or rejects from a concentration camp, and so on. It's just bizarre. (And I won't even go into what passes as art these days, much less music!)



When you take those things in the context of what has happened to the U.S. since 9-11, and you compare it to the society depicted in this movie, there are unnerving parallels. I even think that Gibson intended the movie to reflect the U.S. in it's decline. At the beginning of the movie, he quotes Ariel Durant who wrote:



"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."



As the movie came to the end, I was glad that Gibson didn't use it as a cheesy add for his religious agenda...



It was beautifully photographed, with fantastic sets and I have to say that the violence was not gratuitous: that's just how things were then and to have made the movie otherwise would have been cheating.



Well worth watching; I'm glad I did.