apocalypto
i would like to start this off a bit different; as an open letter of thanks to a few people.
I’d like to thank the religious right and some pissed off Jewish folk for giving the borderline-insane Mel Gibson the finances to go it alone on this film. Without your donations to his cause, given so generously in order to have concrete examples when bitching to anyone who’d listen, I’d never have been able to see this one. Plus, if you hadn’t given him your money he probably wouldn’t have gone clinical.
I would also like to thank you for your protests and rants in the public eye that sparked the curiosity in the sheep. It couldn’t have been just your pockets being drained to reach the $370,271,000 total in this great nation. Yes, the Passion sucked, but that didn’t seem to stop bible-thumpers and controversy-fiends from lining Gibson’s wallet. And without your help this movie would have been shut down faster than rocky VI [[ whoops, well that's what should have happened anyway ]].
Thanks again,
Me
Alright, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into this. The film itself isn’t that bad. As long as you don’t consider dialog, story, or directing. I guess that brings it down to being a pretty movie. I guess you’ll have that when you shoot in a jungle and try to make it as period-accurate as possible. If you get beyond the leafy backdrop and the primitive surroundings and wooden jewelry and National Geographic style toplessness, what are you left with?
The directing is about as text book as you can get. And this is assuming Gibson has read one, because it appears he just copies everything he’s seen done in quality films. There are contrived close-ups, slow-motion, and action sequences drag in order to manufacture suspense. This works in a film like braveheart where there’s enough action on the peripherals to draw focus away from such mediocre attempts at drama. When you only have a small pack of actors in a series of shots the focus must be on them and because of this, in movies like this one and passion, the strategies become ridiculous. I don’t know if i could have taken anymore ‘still camera high speed action’ shots. The shots that resemble something out of beach were a waste of a camera rigging.
The story is impressive. It even starts out well enough for the first hour. Then it sort of gets out of hand. It involves prophecy, destiny, foreshadow, impending doom, violence, triumph, love, sickness, revenge, ancient culture, cunning, and a side of dead language [[ apparently a Gibson favorite ]]. Basically it’s like the two writers [[ he took on a no-name guy to help... probably with grammar. Get it? Dead language... grammar... whatever ]] took turns with darts aiming at a board covered in post-it notes where successful writing strategies were written. Throw the dart, hit romance, and you have yourself a subplot. There is so much packed into this movie that it’s almost comical by the climax. So as I said, the story is impressive.
As far as acting, I have to admit it’s a minor bright spot. Not that it’s great, but it’s not horrible and in some moments can be arresting. The character development is done well, but only because they are so iconic someone watching has no choice but to associate with them. The dialog is dry and ordinary. Most of the story relies on acting cues and body language, which at least makes it easy to follow. If it weren’t for the tits [[ because this is America and you have to be thirteen to see a boob ]] and the signature over-the-top violence [[ Gibson is definitely in a different school of thought than Hitchcock... probably in the same class with Eli Roth actually ]], this would be on the level of a children’s movie.
I downloaded passion and probably could have waited to do the same with this one. I’m concerned that Gibson got lucky with Braveheart and people are concentrating too much on him being a Jew-hating-drunk and not enough on how horrendous his movies are. At least he still made a few million profit to finance his next pile of feces.
sidenote: i should critique movies more harshly on here. Seems like i always end up liking them. This was wicked fun.
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that guy Says: